FESTER

Barefoot, in a miraculously clean, (but in no way suspiciously) white dress, pregnant and feeling contractions coming on, I knew I’d- we’d - be dead by the time she was born. I patted the large knife strapped to my right thigh, comforting myself. I couldn’t survive on my own during The Festering without...

Companionship... or a community.

A neighborhood...

That’s where I could go!

The little neighborhood where I’d house sat for Clem, who preferred sunshine to extended time frames in a frozen wasteland.

“The Pirt Datch. Ohhh noooo, no no. That’s not quite right.” Think... BRAIN. Think.

“OH!” I knew it!

”The Dirt Patch...”

Okay, but how to keep going... keep my mind occupado? “Think, ergh, think, owww!” I growled, staring down at my own body in horror and confusion, grimacing at an especially menacing contraction. Was my abdomen going to rip open? Ripley? Help! Felt like an alien was trying to claw its way out of me.

Wit and wonder... with you. It came to me. His voice. Floating back to me from far away, long ago. His voice, in my mind. Where I still felt whole. “Wit and errrrgh... wonder... with.... ugggg... you.”

Wit and wonder, that would do it. Or I- I would do it. That. The game. OUR game. “Umm, let’s see, hmm, errrrgh,” I leaned over to brace myself on my thighs, there being nothing close by but a terribly wonky line of rotted, tilted fence posts to grab. I really didn’t need an injury from barbed wire in addition to labor pains.

“Ooohh ow, ugg, umm, breathe, Ace! Hoooo yeah breathe! Hoooo, eesh... pit and pluuunder.” I groaned through my next step.

“T... T... tit, heh, and thunder, hah, owwww!” I forced another step. Another pace away from danger and being absolutely alone.

“Grit and grunder.” And another step forward. A step away from home.

Away from them.

From far away and forever ago.

Only a few more steps until The Dirt Patch.

From safety. From my new home.

My new ground in a festering wound of a world.

(Some Time Passes. Not Forever, but enough. Think like, five years. Okay? Deep breath. Annnd flash forwarding to NOW Now!)

“He’s been standing out there for hours... just watching. Like he’s trying to figure us out.”

“Us or our fortress?” I asked, unsure if it even mattered. Scariff looked from me, back over the wall and slowly back to me, before answering.

“Both?”

I took a deep, calming attempt at a breath. “Hmm.” Sighing it out, I claimed, “I’ll go.”

”Think you should?” He was staring over the wall again, frowning.

”No. But I’m not about to send someone else.” I would never send someone out there if I wasn’t willing to go myself. Besides, his outfit, costume, it was... well, familiar. Somehow.

I climbed down the ladder, eyeing a suspiciously full bucket of potatoes, “Don’t you dare.” I stated almost emotionlessly. This was not the first time pilfered food stock was taken to try out as ammunition..

“What?”

”Scare, you KNOW what.” I flicked my gaze over the bucket of our home grown starchy food supply.

“It’s not like I’d use it on em while you’re in range.” He argued as I stepped over the white PVC cannon barrel sporting a purple stripe.

I calmly ordered, “How dare. Stay out of my duct tape supplies.”

”Fine! But it needs to stand out!”

”You need to stand down. No firing anything over the wall. But definitely and especially NOT potatoes!”

”Fyfe. No fun.”

“Dude. Duh.”

Scaff arrived, carrying another blue bucket which given his posture, must be heavy. Flip. Upon seeing me, he dropped it post haste and hurried over to the ladder to whisper to Scariff.

”Oh SHIPS! What did she say?”

”Not now, man. Not now.”

I turned back to remind them, “No cotato cannon.”

Scariff hollered back, ”Don’t you mean Potato Pannon?”

”Dude.” Scaff shook his head, laughing. “You did it too.” His fresh from the garden hands on his brother’s face, trying to move his lips correctly. “Messed up your mouth. It’s Cotato Pannon.” I heard as I gently jogged away in a frustrated fashion, hoping they would listen to me. I eyed the vivid forest green aluminum baseball bat at my back porch, and decided to grab it, stepping through my open french doors, and the billowing purple curtains to take a much needed potty break. The last thing I needed out there was my bladder distracting me.

I hustled toward the gate, thinking I needed to stop to eat a snack too but pushed that sensory stall tactic aside for the sake of just going for it. Keeping my cool and my momentum. My wits. Even on an empty tummy. Passing cones in an array of bleached orange, I couldnt help but add choreography to the simple task of holding a bat.

“Clem? Open up, please and thank you.” I panted my greeting, having never truly acclimated to the higher elevation or the dryness.

”Unscheduled off-world activation!” He shouted with abundant glee and a hint of obsessive love for all things Stargate SG-1.

“You know... I know. I do. I know that... but Clem, I have to figure this one out.”

Clem’s eyes rolled, metal screeched, and I quickly slipped through the narrow opening. The gate (not an actual Stargate, wink) slamming shut behind me, a gust of hot dust blasting my neck. “You didn’t have to dust me.” I grumbled. Then glared up at him when the dusting floated away.

“Didn’t have to.” He smiled maniacally.

“You’re such a poo head sometimes.”

”Only sometimes.”

“So snarky larky.”

“Like that’s a thing?” He asked the crowd, which included only moi.

I trudged away from Clem and his lack of stellar anything gate to give me some space. Heh. To get away from our wall, to keep him in my sights as I hiked the weeds and desert scrub to edge closer. Like a deer, I watched and kept reminding myself I was graceful, careful. To move like I used to, when I was dancing.

I tripped over a rock. Nearly falling on my face, I righted myself just in time and wondered if I had ever been graceful, for a moment of my life. Maybe back in high school. “In Marching Guard and Color Band.” I stopped walking, hiking, and tilted my head in consideration. “Did I mix that up?” I shook my head anx kept moving. Truthfully, there was no time to reflect back. Still, my so very spicy mind couldn’t help but do so. Time travel back to then, when I danced across cool blades of vivid green and smiled, feeling content. Like my place in my world was right there, on that ground, at the precise time, with my people.

(Some more trudging and another tiny trip but still no falling on her face. She’s like a deer, remember? Real graceful. Yeah.)

Finally, I was standing below where I first spotted him, but out about twenty feet from our wall. I sneakily glanced back at the fortress of no solitude whatsoever, having caught movement. “I see you, Scare. Nerfy!” I yelled backwards to my left. “Don’t. You. Dare.” A thick, white and purple PVC pipe aimed at us quickly disappeared from sight. I shifted my sole attention back on Desert Dude. Oddly, there was no blood on his cloak. Not from what I could see. Maybe his tux was covered in it. And yet, wearing a cloak... seemed a mildly intelligent choice. A BRAINy strategy.

“Hello there.” I called out, “Feeling very Jedi mind trick...” I motioned my baseball bat at his attire, tempted to do an old guard toss with it, for fun. But that was no time for fun. Was pretty sure. So i did one anyways. Just a tiny toss. Keeping my bat and the Jedi in my sights the whole time. “And your weird robe cloak thing just set off my dusty imagination...” I blew out my breath, “but I’m nervous you might actually answer me. Wouldn’t that be weird, if you did?” I asked him and myself, in a trepidatious mumble. “Is trepidatious a real word?” I wondered aloud, starring at the scrub brush and dirt to my right. “Did I just make that up?”

Nothing. No answer. I looked up. At him. Just one, tiny, barely significant shuffle forward. Toward me. Then nothing. Nothing at all.

Stop and stare. Like that song. Which then began playing in my head. I began singing it, couldn’t seem to stop. What else was there to do in a desert during The Festering? “I think I’m moving but I go nowhere... yeah I know that everyone gets scared... you start to wonder why you’re here not there.”

I thought I could hear the next line, so very quietly it could have simply been my neurons firing... remembering. “I’ve become what I cannot be... something pulls my focus out. Can you see what I see.” So. Very. Softly, the words float through the wind along with random tumbleweeds.

“Dude. What are you doing out here?” He merely stood there, watching. Not talking. Not trying to bite me. Or anything, really.

”Still no response? Hmph. Flipping Cylons. Why did I think this one, THIS ONE, might talk?” I shouted to the wide-open sky, because why not? Who would care? He obviously didn’t. He wasn’t remotely interested or intelligent. He just happened to be frozen staring at a wall. So what?

Maybe it was his tuxedo. Yeah. Gave him an air of distinction, dignity but with more than a dash of discomfort. Purposeful fanciness. Intelligence...? He had on a bow tie for Heaven’s sake! And a hooded cloak... which was ominously weird. What was he playing at?

“Fine! Whatever. I give up! You hear that? I. Give. Up.” He stepped closer. Three steps. Then four steps. I gripped my baseball bat, patted the large knife strapped to my right thigh. For comfort.

(Alert! Hooded tuxedo dude thinking and speaking in three, two...)

I stepped closer, unsure if I wanted to rush this perfect moment. Not this time. Never, with her.

“Just bite me already! Get your germs all up in here and kill me, you creepy barnacle!”

I took one last huge step right into her heat as I pushed back my hood and finally spoke the words I was never free from. Round and round they swirled, urging me, compelling me to find her. To make her mine. Really mine. To keep her. Forever.

“Oh... my sweet... Aceliaaah... I only... need... a nibble.” Her shocked gasp took the air I no longer craved, her eyes flaring wide with wonder and yes, a little bit of horror. And why wouldn’t she? I was a horrid terrible thing. But I was not what she thought I was. I was not a zombie. I was not alive but I would not need brains or flesh to sustain me. I simply needed her.

“You- you can speak?”

“Only... for you.” I ground out, my vocal cords like splintered wood and sharp gravel.

“But you were dead!”

“Only... for... a little.”

“I thought you were quite dead.”

“Actually... not quite.”

“I left. I couldn’t stand to be... and you weren’t there. I had-“

“I know. Now... give... your husband... a kiss.”

“A what? Kiss you? But you aren’t alive!”

“Do I... smell... so bad?”

“Umm... no. You don’t smell at all.”

“Then... give me... your lips.”

“Are you going to bite them off of me?”

“Never... ever.”

“Dun- Duncan, it’s been five years. Since that day I saw you die. Five. I thought you were gone. For. Ever. But you’ve been tracking me? All this time? Five years later? How did you not rot and fall apart? I’m not sure I’m ready for kissing.”

“Well, perhaps... one little... Nibble.”

“Nombie Zibbles? WHAT? NO! You said you wouldn’t bite my lips off! You said you weren’t a zombie!”

“I won’t... be biting... your lips.”

“Wha- ohhh. T.S.A.B.B. There shall always be biting. Whoa. Duncan. Just hold up. There’s something you need to know.”

“Not... bites. Nibbles... What could...I need to know... other than... I want... I... want...” He shook his head in a stilted side to side, “I want... to kiss... my wife?”

“I had a baby. A child. I mean WE. We have a child. A daughter. You... have a daughter.”

“I’m... a Dad?”

“Yeah. A previously DEAD Dad. So, that’s a weird thing to consider explaining.”

“Can... I... meet... her?”

“No. I mean, not yet. I have to make sure it’s safe to get close to you.”

“You’re... safe... here. Now.”

“Am I? You snuck up on me and you’ve been after me for what? How long? All five years?”

“It was... a long... walk.”

“Hmm.”

“May I...look... at her?”

“No. Maybe when I know you aren’t a threat. But I have to be sure, Duncan. Certain.”

”Quite... certain.”

”Yes.”

“What’s... her name?”

“Remi Fyfe.”

”Remi.”