Halfkinds Volume 1: Contact (2 page)

I place the scanner above her left
wrist.  Two small needles protrude from it and prick her forearm.  The blood
sample is taken.  The scan is complete.

“Analyzing,” the computer says,
“estimated completion time five minutes.”

I really need to upgrade my
software, because five minutes is a goddamn eternity compared to some of the
newer models out there.  With five minutes to kill, I continue my investigation
of the house.

It is odd, I see signs of life
around the house, but what I don’t see are signs of a full life.  There are no
books, no TV, not even a music player.  The house just has things that were
necessary for living.  Clothes, some unclean dishes in the sink, a few credits
lying about.  That was it, nothing else.  This woman seemed to live far away
from the modern world, like a hermit.

I walk out into the living room
and notice a door on the wall.  It must be a closet, so I approach it and
nothing happens.  Its motion sensor must be broken, I’m going to have to do
this the old-fashioned way.  I reach into its indented groove, get a firm grip,
and pull hard.  Really hard.  After a few seconds of struggle, I’m able to pry
it open.  It is a closet, filled with dusty boxes.  Whatever is in them hasn’t
been touched for a long time.

I open one of them to see its
contents - a bunch of photo frames, lots of them.  I grab the nearest one and
take a look at the picture.  It’s her, the woman, kneeling on a porch next to
what appears to be a group of children.  At least, they look like her children,
though there sure are a lot of them.  The photo is dusty so I use my shirt to
wipe it clean.  I take a closer look at her.  She is smiling and looks healthy.

I then look at the children.  They
look ‘different’ to put it nicely.  I don’t notice at first, but as I stare
closer at each one, they don’t appear to be human.  Some have long hairs coming
out of their faces, others have no hair and their skin looks scaly.  One in
particular looks like he has some stripes on his face.  I have never seen a
picture of children like that before.  They almost look like animals.

Was this taken during Halloween? 
These costumes look pretty real.  What kind of freak show was this?

“Analysis complete.”

I nearly drop the scanner as the
sound of the AI breaks my thoughts.

“Name, Maya Lawton, age of death,
eighty two.  There is a thirty percent chance victim died of natural causes. 
The rest is inconclusive.”

“Natural causes at this age?  I
find that hard to believe.  Computer, any unusual traits found on the body?”

“Inconclusive.”

I have never heard the computer
say that.

“Computer,” I say, “please be more
specific with your response.”

“Subject appears to have some
damage in the uterus area, but I cannot find a match to a historical case
similar to what was scanned.”

“That’s strange.  Computer, cross
reference your search on uterus damage with multiple births.  Victim appears to
have a group of several children.  Could the toll of multiple births combined
with your findings of uterus damage have been a cause of death?”

“Computing…… It is possible, but
inconclusive.”

It looks like I am going nowhere
with the cause of death.

“Computer,” I say, “please state
medical history.”

“No recent records found.  Last
known medical appointment occurred on February 13th, 2990.”

“Damn, that was over fifty years
ago.  Computer, state criminal record.”

“Maya Lawton alias Maya Howl. 
Five counts of illegal prostitution.  Last known incarceration was in 3014,
sentenced to ten years for unlawful interspecies intercourse.  Was released
with good behavior in 3016.”

I look at the pictures.  “3016,
that was twenty four years ago.  That means this picture was taken after that. 
Interspecies intercourse?  It can’t be…. Computer, summarize most recent
research on interspecies breeding.”

“With other species gaining
intelligence spanning hundreds of years, research on interspecies breeding
suggests it is still only in theory.  Scientists are unsure of the probability
that one day interspecies breeding is possible.  Case in point, there is no
conclusive evidence proving or disproving the possibility of mixed species
existing.  However, public opinion has remained that this subject is taboo.”

The computer tells me what I
already know, but my eyes do not.  I see a picture of half- man, half-animal
children and I learn of their mother’s shady history as a prostitute.  I put
the clues together and hypothesize that this woman gave birth to abominations,
monsters or something.

But where are they?  I see no
signs of life at all.  Not even a sound.  It’s as if the only person who lived
in this house was her.

Creaaak!

I hear the footsteps of someone
else.  I am not alone in this house and quickly run to a wall, gun pressed
against my chest.  The steps come slowly, thump, by thump, by thump.  The sound
emits from the front of the house.  I am in the living room, right beside it. 
The only thing that separates us is a thin, decrepit wall.

I don’t think the intruder heard
me shuffle to my cover, because its footsteps sound calm.  There’s no rushing
or sudden movements.  I slowly edge myself closer, and continue to hear the
lingering thuds of each step.  He’s now walking away from my position, towards
the kitchen, towards the woman’s body.

Does he know her?

This is it, no fear.  I slowly
peer my head over to see who it is, but his back faces me.  He wears a large
sweatshirt, head covered with a hood.  He has thick, brown boots on, which
explains all the heavy thuds I heard when he entered the premises.

From my position, I can see him
kneeling down over the woman’s body.  His back is still turned.  He’s
vulnerable, it is time to make my move.  With a rush of adrenaline, I run to
him and point my gun.

“Freeze!  Hands up!” I yell.  He‘s
caught off guard and stands up immediately.  His hands remain at his side.

“I said hands up!”  He does
nothing.  “Hands up!”

I sense his fear, his head is
shivering.

“It’s okay, I just need to ask you
some questions, now hands up!”

Still nothing.

“Now!”  I yell.

In a blink of an eye, he runs
towards the kitchen counter.  I’m shocked that he doesn’t obey my orders.  I
still have my gun pointed at him, and his sudden movements make my trigger
finger itch.  But I remain calm, even as he makes his mad dash to the counter.

I must remain calm.  I must. 
Until…

… I see him reaching for a butcher
knife in the sink.

When you only have a few seconds
to react, time stays still.  I see him reaching for the knife and my instinct
is to move, but my body can’t compute this.  I want to move my arms, my legs,
to charge after him, but I can’t.  That moment is frozen in time, and I feel
paralyzed.

The only thing I can move is my
finger.  I fire a shot directly into his chest.  I fire another one to make
sure.

His arms fly violently above his
head, and he stumbles backwards.  His legs flail up into the air and his head
jerks back.  The knife that was in his hand falls down as he does.  I see all
of this millisecond by millisecond.  That’s how it’s always like when I have to
kill someone.

Time speeds up back to its normal
pace.  The attacker isn’t moving.  There are now two dead bodies on the ground
and I have a good look at his face.  I walk over to examine it and I am
floored.

His skin is shiny, and the
greenest of greens I had ever seen.  His eyes are on the side of his head.  He
has no nose, it’s more like a pointy snout, and his mouth is as wide as his
head.  His legs are strong and muscular.  He looks like a frog, but there is
something strangely human about him.

It is like he was made of puzzle
pieces that aren’t supposed to fit.  The overall picture is completely
unnatural and extremely frightening.

What have I stumbled into?

November 15, 3040
5:01 AM

I didn’t want to leave my brothers
and sisters, but I couldn’t abandon her.  My mother had died, and we left her
for the flies.  It was wrong; it’s not the way mothers should be treated.

Tiago strongly objected when I
told him that we should go back, that we should have given our mom a proper
send-off.  After all, she raised us through blood, sweat and tears, kept us
away from the humans, dogs, wolves, and other animals who won’t understand what
we are.  Tiago never liked her, though.  He said she was a whore behind her
back and that the only reason we existed was because of her whorish ways.

I may be the youngest of all my
brothers and sisters, and Tiago may be the oldest, but what he said was
incredibly immature.  How could you say that about your own mother?

I would hear her talk about the
outside world.  She would say society would deem us freaks, that they would
never understand us.  She made sure that we never left the house, that no one
could ever see who we are, and I could see her point.  I read the news, watched
the TV shows and movies she let us see.  All of those animals I saw on those
programs, none of them looked like us.  I saw dogs and cats, humans and frogs,
bears and lions, they all looked like what they were supposed to.  We, on the
other hand, didn’t completely look like other humans, we didn’t completely look
like other animals, and I didn’t look like the normal frogs I’ve seen.  No, we
looked different; we were special.

My mother was a human.  I can see
her human traits in myself.  When I was young and I asked her who my father
was, who was this mysterious frog that was part of me.  She would always avoid
the question.

“It’s not important,” she would
say.  Eventually, she said it enough times that I believed it wasn’t
important.  I had my mother, and that’s all that I needed.

It wasn’t until I was a little
older that Tiago told me the truth about her, that she was a prostitute who
serviced not only her kind but other species as well.  Gross.  My mom said that
all eleven of us were unique, that we were the first of our kind.  She was
right.  When I looked things up on the infospace, the results stated that scientific
findings proved interspecies breeding is impossible.

Maybe mom was different.  Maybe
there was something about her body that allowed it to be possible.  She never
went to the doctor.  Last time she had an appointment was forty years ago, or
so she said.  She insisted there was nothing to figure out and pretty much
balked at the idea of finding the answer.  Even if she knew the answer, she
wasn’t telling us.  All of that was a part of a past she wanted left behind.

But there are some things you
can’t run from.

All those times Tiago called her a
whore, he was right.  She bore eleven children in the span of six years.  I
guess since we were a mix of different species, some of us were faster to pop
out than others.  Or maybe mom’s unique physiology sped up her maternity.  I
never really understood the science of it, but all of us are here, and it
happened.

I also learned about the baggage
we carried.  I had seen a lot on the news, and I researched what I could on the
infospace.  Interspecies prostitution is universally frowned upon in
practically all corners of the world.  She was a whore in the most vile sense.

When I first found out, I was disgusted
with her.  I didn’t talk to her for days.  She didn’t ask why I was angry, but
I think she figured it out.  During a dinner, when it was just me and her, she
asked me what was wrong.

“Nothing,” I said.

“What did your older brother say
to you?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

We didn’t say anything for the
rest of dinner, but later that night I heard her quarrelling with Tiago in one
of the rooms.  It was hard to make out, but I could hear what they were arguing
about.

“What did you want me to tell
him?” I heard Tiago yell.

“Anything but that I was a
prostitute!” she said.  “That was almost fifteen years ago.  It’s something I want
to leave behind!”

“Well, it’s hard to leave behind
considering the eleven freaks you raised as your own.”

“Don’t call yourself that, you’re
not freaks!”

“If we aren’t, then why do you
keep us locked in this house? Why can’t we go outside and explore the world?”

“You know why.  They’ll hunt you. 
They’ll take you away from me.  Even worse, they’ll make you experiments.  You
do understand why I have to protect you from the world, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I do, it’s because you’re a
paranoid psycho.”

Tiago then stormed out of the room
and went to the backyard to let off some steam.  I didn’t understand him.  For
a guy who claimed he wanted to see the world, he could have left anytime he
wanted to, but he didn’t.  I guess he was as afraid of what was out there as
the rest of us.  We all were scared, my mother made it very clear that we would
not be welcomed into society.  She got to him, too.

It didn’t matter to me, though.  I
had no desire to leave.  My mother loved all of us, cared for all of us, and
that’s all that mattered.  When we needed food, she provided it.  When we
needed clothes, she gave them to us.  And for the most part, our family got
along.  Even Tiago, the sibling I feared the most, was someone I could call my
brother.  We looked out for each other because we were family.  It was the only
thing I needed.  Let the world figure out its own problems, because I didn’t
want to be a part of it.

The house was a great place to
live.  It was a little rundown, and it was only one story, but what you
couldn’t see on the surface was that there were a whole slew of rooms
underground.  That’s where my siblings and I lived for most of our lives.  We
congregated and spent time as a family upstairs, but we had our own space
below.  My mom lived upstairs.  As she put it, it would give off the right
appearance in case someone came knocking, though we hadn’t encountered anyone
in ages.  Our street was practically a ghost town.  I suppose it was another
way my mom kept us under wraps.  For the sixteen years I’ve been alive, the
only people I knew of were my family and what I saw on TV and the infospace.  I
had never seen the outside world other than through what I saw on a screen.