Smokedawg “Waiting for Her”

About the Author

J. Jefferson (aka Smokedawg) is a middle-aged editor and journalist manifesting his mid-life crisis by finally writing the fiction his schoolmates always thought he would have been writing since graduation (but didn’t). He began work on a sci-fi novel in 2008, then fell into erotica in 2009 by starting his blog ”Better With Smoke” (http://betterwithsmoke.wordpress.com) as a way to explore the smoking fetish in fiction and commentary. He sometimes writes exclusive smoking fetish erotica for the forum “Smoking Fetish Kingdom” and is also regularly contributing general erotica and even some non-erotic fiction for the Celis T. Rono Writer’s Collective. You can e-mail him at: pseudojeff@msn.com.

This particular story is NOT erotica (although there is some inappropriate touching…LOL), which is a rarity for me these days (aside from my in-progress sci-fi novel). I think it’s horror but in the end, maybe it’s a romance. Only you can know for sure.

Waiting for Her

Father and son stood atop the hill. It was a commanding position, had they been in any position to defend their position against an attack.

But as it was—armed with a half-loaded 9mm pistol, a nicked machete, a surgically sharp meat cleaver, a club wrapped in barbed wire and a sawed-off shotgun with just one shell remaining—they weren’t in a position to defend much more than their honor.

No, their position now was just to have a commanding view. The valley before them, stretching for miles. The sea at their back, and Renaldo’s freighter waiting just off the coast for them.

“She’ll come,” the father said.

“What if…” the son began.

“She’ll come,” he repeated.

They stood in silence a while longer, and the son recalled the throngs of the Changed. Their eyes moist and black and soulless…

No, not soulless, the young man realized. But filled with something alien. A hunger and drive and compulsion beyond hunger. Something almost mesmerizing in its depth and intensity. Abyssal depths into which one’s will might pour, like a bucket of water down a bottomless pit.

“They’re out there. In the trees and mists, Dad. What if she…”

“She’ll come,” he said again. “I promised her we would meet her. Wait for her. She’s your mother, goddammit! We wait.”

“I’m scared!” the son snapped, the realization dawning on him with a tsunami’s ferocity that he would never go to a homecoming dance. Likely never attend a college. Possibly never marry. Never have a child. Maybe never grow old.

At least not as a human.

“We’ve been scared a long time,” the father said. His tone held love, but also a rebuff. “Embrace the fear. Or just get used to it. You should have done one or the other by now.”

“I haven’t had time to think about it. We’ve been running hard since we got the transmission from that Renaldo guy,” the son responded, knowing that this wasn’t the time to seek sympathy or emotional support from his father. “I haven’t had time to think of anything since…”

“She’s gone. We can’t change that.”

“She was my sister!”

“She was my daughter,” the father said, and tears shined briefly in his eyes before he clamped them down. The son knew that holding fast was all his father had left. He’d failed one child; he was determined not to fail another. Or his wife, for that matter.

The young man recalled, against his will, his last view of his sister, less than a week ago. At least four sets of arms, and at least three slick tendrils as well, pulling her through the previously barricaded window, the splinters of the broken wood scratching at her skin. But she didn’t scream. Their touch had already reached her mind, dulled it. Glass fragments from what little remained of the panes drew out little lines of blood, but she didn’t cry. Her consciousness was now in thrall.

Their fluids were all over her skin by then, tendrils and fingers in her mouth. Touching at her eyes. Perhaps dipping into other places more intimate where the contagion would be quickly absorbed into the blood.

It was a trick of his fears, he knew at the time, when he thought he saw her eyes darken to black. Just the shadows, he realized now. The change doesn’t happen that fast.

Not quite that fast, anyhow. A day or two. Quick enough.

“Stop thinking about it,” the father chided gently. Or as gently as he could, anyway, as his voice still held a metallic rasp as he said the words.

“If I don’t think about it now, I’ll just dream about it later,” the son countered. What little sleep he had gotten for the past several days was filled with things that, as bad as they were, still weren’t as bad as what was happening to this country and the people in it. However many were still people, anyway. “Any idea if it’s spread?” the young man asked, grasping for a topic that might take his mind off his sister’s eyes turned black and her skin glistening and gray-sheened.

“Renaldo said there were bunches of reports in Central America. A few in Canada. He thinks it probably hasn’t gotten to Europe yet. Or Asia. They act like animals. Smart animals, but still animals. Maybe we’ll be lucky enough that they won’t know how to fly planes or navigate ships. Then we only lose the Americas.”

Below them, the son saw a lone figure emerge in the late afternoon sun.

“There,” he told his father.

The older man—not old yet, but his eyes were ancient now—put the binoculars to his eyes, lingered on the view for a long time. He put them down again, and sighed. He said nothing.

“Mom?”

“It’s her, son,” the father said, nodding. His voice was so calm, and all at once, the tension seemed to flow out of the older man. He handed his son the binoculars, and turned to walk down the hill toward his wife. “Got to the ship and head out with Renaldo, son.”

“Dad?”

His father turned back to him, his eyes firm. “Go now.”

“You and mom are going to meet…”

“Go. Now.”

His father handed over his pack and his weapons to his son, and then headed down the hill, slowly.

Heart hammering and fingers twitching, the son raised the binoculars up to look at his mother. When he did, it was as if she knew he was watching, as she seemed to stare right at him.

Eyes black as Hell. Blouse torn half off and a breast mostly exposed to view. Skin gray as a stormy twilight. Glistening and wet. Inviting in some obscene, succulent way.

“Dad! No! She one of them!”

His father stopped, looked at his son. “Changed. One of the Changed.”

“Yes!” the son said, then suddenly realized his father hadn’t asked a question. He knew. He was making a statement. “Dad?”

“I promised I wouldn’t leave her behind, son,” he said. “I won’t.”

The man continued down the hill. The son stood there, transfixed by the terrible motif. Watched as his father approached his mother. No, the Changed woman. As her arms spread wide, offering an embrace. As his father stepped into that embrace and kissed his once-wife deeply, re-consummating their marriage anew in a hellish bond. Her glistening fingers of her hands reached up to touch the corners of his eyes almost tenderly. Then the fingers of both hands dipped into his pants to touch the tip of his cock, no doubt; to delve into his anus as well.

The Changed were nothing if not thorough, the son considered.

The son watched with sick fascination as his father gave himself to the beginnings of the change, knowing that his will was soft now, and he would go where they went, and the son wondered if they were still husband and wife; father and mother. Or if they were simply one in the hoard and one on the way to joining it.

The son hovered on the edge of a decision.

Wondered if the world Renaldo was headed for was even his anymore.

Or if his world should be with his family. Here.

“Brother,” came the soft, damp whisper of a voice from off to his right. Black eyes of his sister. Slick, wet skin hovering between the shades of amber and gray.

He hovered, too. And wondered if he should run.

Or embrace his sister.