The Tick People, page 5
The tick woman saw his erection and tried to wrap her claws around him again, but he pushed her away. This confused her. He was giving her mixed signals. His body was asking her to embrace him, but his words and actions were refusing her. She didn’t know how to respond.
“Matchmate or no matchmate?” she asked.
Fernando held up the papers and ripped them in half.
“No matchmate,” he said. He tossed the papers aside and broke eye contact with her. “I’m sorry.”
She sprayed him with a toxic, eggy musk. He waved the smell away. It was so strong it burned his eyes. Based on her facial expression, he didn’t think the smell meant she was angry at him for his response. It seemed like she was begging him to reconsider, perhaps asking him but don’t you want to have children someday?
To whatever she said, he shook his head no one last time. Then he turned around and walked out of the alley. He didn’t look back. He just left, trying to hide his erection from the people outside the record shop.
CHAPTER SIX
THE STRAY
It took seven blocks before Fernando realized that the tick woman was following him.
“Go back,” Fernando said. “I don’t want you.”
She stopped, but she did not turn back, wiggling her insect appendages at him. When he turned around to move forward, she continued following him.
“No,” he told her. “Go back. No.”
“Home…” she said.
“No home,” he yelled. “I don’t want you going to my home.”
After spending so many days being hassled by reporters, the last thing he wanted was to have anyone see a tick woman around his house. If one of his neighbors saw her, they’d probably get the media back on his doorstep within the hour.
“Go away.”
But she didn’t listen. She was persistent. He wished he didn’t get aroused when he was around her. By doing that, it probably convinced her that she still had a chance to be with him. It made her think that part of him was looking for a mate.
“I said go away!”
Fernando picked up a rock and threw it at her. She flinched and closed up her shell, but the rock didn’t come anywhere near where she stood. He didn’t want to hurt her. He just wanted to scare her away. It didn’t work.
He moved forward a few feet. Whenever he found a rock, he would pick it up and throw it at her. She would hide in her shell for a moment. But once he turned around, she would come out of her shell and hurry after him. After a while, Fernando stopped throwing rocks. Not only because it did not prove effective, but also because it was very difficult to find rocks on top of a giant dog. The rocks he did find were mostly just chunks of asphalt.
“Are you going to follow me all the way home?” he asked.
She wiggled her antennae.
Fernando shook his head and moved on. He tried to pick up his pace, move faster down the road. But Google picked up her pace as well. She scuttled as fast as she could on her six insect legs, shuffling down the road so that she wouldn’t lose Fernando. At first, she was able to keep up. But then Fernando went even faster. He ran at top speed, rushing through the streets as though running from certain death, not looking back for even a second as he escaped the hideous mutant.
It was an hour after he got home when he heard the scratching on his front door. He looked out the window to see her insect shell shifting and oozing with strange fluids. Through the door, he could smell the warm, buttery odor leaking out of her at full strength.
“How the hell did she find me?”
Fernando had lost her. He ran far faster than she could keep up. There was no way she would have been able to find him.
“Mentis?” she said on the other side of the door.
He realized she must have followed his scent. He probably left a scent trail all the way to his house. Either it was his own body smells or maybe she had marked him with a special odor she could follow. Whatever the case, she’d found him and unless he moved far away she would always be able to find him.
“Mentis?” she repeated in her awkward human voice.
He opened the door. She scuttled forward, as if trying to squeeze her way inside, but Fernando left the door open only a crack. He would not allow her entry.
“I told you to go away,” he said.
She wouldn’t go away. She oozed a glue-like smell, as if trying to convince him to give her a chance.
“I find you repulsive,” he said. “Don’t you find me repulsive, too? We’re not the same species. We should not be together.”
She continued oozing different smells, as if speaking as fast as she could. Fernando wasn’t dealing with a normal woman. Humans could be reasoned with. They have intelligence and the ability to resist their primal urges most of the time. But Ectoparasites had very little intelligence. They possessed insect-like brains and were driven purely by instinct. All they cared about was eating and breeding. It wasn’t going to be easy for him to convince her to leave.
“Look, you need to go,” he said, shaking his head as he spoke. “You can’t stay here.”
She sprayed him with more smells, so many that his senses were overwhelmed and they all blurred together into one.
“I don’t want any of my neighbors to see you out here.”
She said, “But Mentis…”
Then she gave him a long face. He could tell she didn’t want to go back to the alley where the humans constantly abused her. Even though he didn’t want to have anything to do with her, he agreed that she should never go back there.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I never should have gone to see you.”
She sprayed him with the buttery odor in such a strong dose that it made his head drift, his muscles loosened. The smell was like a loving embrace. It was like she was hugging him, soothing him with her words.
“Fine,” he said.
He had no idea what she was saying to him with that smell, but apparently she convinced him to let her come inside.
“Get in before any of my neighbors see you out here.”
She shuffled into his house like a monstrous crab, spewing a minty bologna smell at him as if thankful for letting her inside. Fernando didn’t know what he was going to do about her, but he knew if he left her on his porch she would just wait out there until the news vans returned.
He decided he would let her spend the night. Then, the next day, he would visit the tick woman’s mother. The old bug lady could translate for him and convince her daughter to stay away. Then the whole ordeal would finally come to an end.
Fernando was at first worried that the tick woman would misinterpret his gesture as an invitation to mate with him, but once inside she did not try anything. She was respectful. She seemed to be content with checking out what she thought was her new home.
She looked around his house, smelling at all of his furniture, investigating the place with her creepy antennae. She crawled around his carpet face-down, using all six of her insect legs. When she was down on all legs, she didn’t look human at all. Her human features—face, neck, breasts, and belly—were hidden beneath her shell and all he could see was her massive insect body and wiggling antennae. It was like he had a six-foot cockroach scurrying through his home. He’d never seen anything so disgusting.
“You can sleep out here,” he told her, when she sniffed her way through the living room. “We’ll go see your mother in the morning.”
“No eat,” she said, pointing at his floor.
She seemed to be wondering how she was going to feed on Old Gloomy’s blood with his floor covering the flesh-earth.
“If you have to feed you need to go in the backyard,” he said. “You can’t go in the front or people will see.”
She scraped her claws on the carpet, trying to dig through like a dog attempting to bury a bone.
“No,” Fernando said. He pushed on her shell. “Stop it. You’re tearing up the carpet.”
She stopped and looked up at him, wondering why he had such a strange home that covered up the ground.
“Eat,” she said.
Fernando wiped his greasy hands against his thigh. “You’ll have to wait until morning.”
“Eat,” she said.
Fernando sighed. “Fine. Come with me.”
She followed him to the other side of the house. When he opened the sliding glass door, he pointed at a bald patch of ground in the center of his fenced yard. Hair as tall as trees grew along the fence, giving him privacy from his neighbors. He had no problem with her feeding back there.
She just stood in place, looking at him with her dark brown eyes. He realized she wasn’t trying to dig through the floor because she was hungry. She just wanted to know how she was going to live in a house with a covered floor. It was inconvenient for an Ectoparasite.
“Go ahead,” Fernando said. “Eat.”
She watched him for a few more minutes, then looked at the yard. He pointed at the bald spot of ground until she finally went outside.
“Good tick,” he said.
She turned to him with a glare when he said the word tick. She must have had a bad association with the word. Those hooligan teenagers who bullied and assaulted her must have called her that word many times before. She almost seemed offended that her matchmate would use such a cruel term.
“Sorry,” Fernando said. But he really didn’t care too much. He wondered if she would go away if he used the term enough.
Because his matchmate didn’t have a drill-shaped head, she wasn’t able to dig into Old Gloomy’s flesh as easily as normal parasites. She chewed into his meat with her shark-like teeth, ripped open the flesh with her claws, and then squeezed her head deep inside the hole until she could reach the blood.
As her bulbous body hovered in the air, Fernando watched her get plump with blood. He couldn’t imagine the flavor of drinking dog blood. It must have tasted so rusty, so earthy. He’d heard of poor people sometimes carving chunks of flesh from the dog’s back whenever they were desperate for food, but drinking the blood was even more disgusting than that.
Twenty minutes passed and the woman still didn’t stop drinking. Fernando decided it would be best to leave her outside over night. He put a bowl of water out for her, as if she were some kind of stray dog. Then he turned off the lights and closed the sliding glass door.
“Goodnight,” he said.
She stayed out there with her head deep inside the dogflesh, probably unaware that he locked her out as she fed. But Fernando didn’t care. He went to his room and tried to go to sleep before she noticed he was gone.
In the middle of the night, Fernando dreamt that a giant cockroach was crawling on top of him, licking his neck with a forked tongue that smelled of raw shrimp. He woke to see the tick woman staring down at him in the dark, her antennae wiggling over his head.
Fernando jumped up and turned on the light.
“What are you doing in here?” he cried.
She touched him with her pincher. “Sleep…”
“You can’t sleep in here,” he said. “Go back outside.”
Even if she understood what he was saying, she didn’t listen to him. She kissed his neck, licked him with her strange tongue.
“Stop,” Fernando said. But he didn’t do anything to make her stop.
She used her left pincher to cut his pajama shirt, snipping it from the bottom up to the top. Then she sprayed him with the warm, buttery odor. It filled his lungs, calmed him, made him feel comfortable around her. Then she pressed her breasts against his bare chest.
He closed his eyes and tried to forget who or what she was. As she kissed him and rubbed her breasts in a circle against him, she almost seemed like a real woman. His penis grew erect.
“We shouldn’t…” Fernando said.
He knew it was wrong. He knew it was the last thing he should do. But he couldn’t help himself. He lifted his butt into the air so she could cut away his pajama pants.
Naked together, beneath the covers, it almost seemed normal. They were just two people touching each other, warming themselves against each other. But then the fluids came out. These weren’t the same as the usual odorous communication fluids. These were sexual fluids that thickened as the tick woman became aroused.
It oozed from her breasts—an invisible grease that smelled of cooking oil—leaking down Fernando’s chest and belly as she rubbed her nipples in circles against him. The fluid was like some kind of lubricant, allowing their bodies to slip and slide across each other. It even made her hard exoskeleton smoother, less abrasive.
“What the hell’s wrong with me…” Fernando moaned to himself. “What the hell am I doing…”
But he couldn’t pull himself away. His key was pointed at that crusty, lumpy hole in her lower abdomen and no matter how disgusting he thought it was there was a part of him that was begging to unlock it.
“We shouldn’t do this…” Fernando told the insect.
But she wouldn’t listen. She’d been waiting her entire life for this moment. She wasn’t going to back down now.
She rubbed her insect appendages along her lower abdomen, stroking and vibrating against the wiry black hairs. It reminded Fernando of a spider spinning its web around its prey, only he assumed she was stimulating herself, getting herself ready for him.
“I think I should take a cold shower,” Fernando said, trying to get out of the bed before anything really happened.
But she wouldn’t let him leave. She grabbed his upper arm with her pincher, squeezing firmly yet delicately, pulling him back toward her. When she was finished rubbing her lower section, the exoskeleton swelled open like a mouth lined with black needle-like teeth. Then the mucus flowed out. It was a fishy yellowish-white substance with the consistency of tapioca pudding. It oozed out of her in baseball-sized discharges, rolling down her insect thighs and abdomen, making glugging, smacking sounds as it poured. Fernando was terrified of it, disgusted by it, but not as terrified or disgusted by the fact that it made him more aroused. He still wanted to put his key inside. He still wanted to see what it would be like.
Though the smell attacked his nose, he didn’t resist as she rubbed the creamy custard across his legs and belly. He just laid back and watched as she scuttled on top of him, covering him with her shell. Then his penis disappeared into that gooey mess. At first, it was bumpy and prickly inside. It felt as though giant balls of tapioca shifted and tightened around his member.
Then the magic happened. The thing his body had been craving since the moment he laid eyes on the creature. His key went all the way inside the lock. Fernando gasped. He was surprised how much it really was a perfect fit. Every groove, every angle, every curve of his key was identical to those in her lock. It fit better than a glove. No matter how disgusting the bug woman was to him, their sex organs really were designed for each other.
Fernando felt his key turning inside of her, his foreskin moving counterclockwise around his penis, all on its own, unlocking the tick woman’s vagina. When it shifted all the way around, there was a slight popping sensation. Then his key went deeper inside her body, burrowing through new areas of mucus and lumpy flesh.
As they made love, Fernando lost himself in ecstasy, burying himself in the sticky grossness. Although their sex organs were a perfect fit, Fernando quickly learned that the rest of their bodies were not built to mate with each other. The tick’s exoskeleton was like a baseball bat hammering Fernando’s soft human skin as they thrust into each other. The wiry hairs on her lower abdomen poked him like cactus needles. Her insect legs were like crowbars wrapped in barbed wire, slicing his flesh open as she gripped him tightly. He bled, his bones were bruised, but he wouldn’t stop.
He held her closely, wrapped in her thorny arms, as she curled her shell around him like a roly-poly. He couldn’t see anything any more, encased in her body, buried in her moist smells. She held him safely inside of her, licking his face, wanting to be unlocked over and over again.
CHAPTER SEVEN
BROKEN HOME
In the morning, Fernando could hardly get out of his bed. It hurt to move. His body was torn up, covered in scratches, abrasions, and a few deep gashes along his inner thighs. The fishy mucus covering his body had congealed into a thick crust, gluing his body hairs together, infecting his wounds. His penis was buried under a mound of the tick woman’s creamy vagina pudding. His sheets were saturated in black slime.
A variety of strong odors discharged from his bed as he sat up, as if the smells were supposed to be some kind of love letter the tick woman left for him. She was nowhere to be seen, but there were signs of her everywhere. His walls were scratched up, as if she was trying to peel down all of the wall paper. Both lamps were in pieces on the floor. A trail made of some kind of foul-smelling oily substance went from the bathroom to the bed to the bedroom door.
“What the hell…”
Fernando realized what a horrible mistake he’d made allowing the woman to enter his home. He knew he needed to get rid of her as soon as possible. There was a good reason why Ectoparasites did not live inside of human homes. They were vermin.
“Gross…”
When he saw himself in the bathroom mirror, the thick custard dangling from his key, he thought back to every little detail of the sex he had the night before. He remembered sliding his key into that black, lumpy pus sack, ignoring how disgusting it all was. But he was aroused then. Now that he was sober, the thought of what he did made him nauseous.
After puking three times into the sink, he hopped in the shower and washed the creature’s stink from his body. The hot water burned away the itchiness from his wounds and melted the crust from his crotch. The water pooling in the tub below turned a dark brown. He didn’t want to leave the shower. It was soothing and warm. He didn’t want to have to face the tick woman again.
