The Tick People, page 8
“But you still want your old job back, don’t you?”
“Of course I do. I’m a Stressman, like my father and my grandfather before me. It was what I was born to be.”
“Good,” Mr. Olsen said, nodding his head. “Because I’d like to give you another chance. I think your time off did you some good. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Stressman more depressed.”
Fernando shrugged.
“I mean it, you look downright miserable.”
Fernando shrugged again.
“I’d like you to come in bright and early on Monday,” Olsen said. “Don’t worry about bringing any new ideas. Just come in with an old standby sadness treatment and we’ll see how it goes.”
“Sure,” Fernando said.
He stood up and put out his hand to shake, but the boss waved it away.
“And try to find a better way to cover up that stink on you,” Olsen said. “Your cologne isn’t quite strong enough.”
Fernando lowered his hand. “I’ll see what I can do.”
On the way out, Fernando passed Old Gloomy’s face and looked up into the dog’s massive eyes. With just one glance, Gloomy saw the cold, depressing emotions oozing from the man with the parasitic bride. The sadness was contagious. All it took was one look upon the Stressman for the old dog to burst into tears.
“Yes,” said Mr. Olsen, nodding his head at the sight. “I think you’ll do just fine, Mr. Mendez. If your attitude keeps up, maybe you’ll even take over my job someday.”
Fernando just nodded and walked on. It used to excite him, make him feel accomplished, even heroic, whenever he made Old Gloomy cry. But as the dog’s tears rained into the canals below, he felt nothing.
When Fernando got home, he squeezed past the dozens of wiggling larvae infesting his home, half of them gorging on blood on the living room floor, poking up in the air like fat white balloons of flesh.
“Goo?” Fernando called out.
He couldn’t wait to be with her again.
“Where are you?”
She was right where he expected she would be—waiting for him in the bedroom. He hated the sight of her. He hated the look of her sitting on his bed, rubbing her lower abdomen with those twitchy spider-like appendages. But he hated himself even more as got on top of her and put his key into her sludgy custard-filled lock.
As they mated, he could feel sticky round orbs rubbing against the tip of his penis deep inside of her. Fernando didn’t notice it before, but this time he realized that those globby balls of mucus deep in her gooey hole were actually her eggs. He was fucking her egg sack. And as he shoved himself deeper inside, the idea of ejaculating onto all of those eggs, fertilizing them, turning them into mutant babies, only made him more erect. It took him just another minute before he exploded, filling her arachnid egg sack with his human seed.
As he finished and rolled off of her onto the greasy sheets, she got up and left the bed. She didn’t care about cuddling. She didn’t care about holding him in her thorny arms. She just wanted to tend to her children and lay another batch of eggs.
Fernando just stayed there. He had no reason to get up. He just looked up at the ceiling, thinking about all the reasons he loathed himself, wondering if there was any way he’d ever get over his need for the creature’s body. Eventually, his wife would come back to him and they’d do it again. He wouldn’t resist. He would gladly give himself over to the urge, every single time. He wasn’t strong enough to do otherwise.
Although Ectoparasites didn’t really understand the concept of love or happiness, Google was very satisfied having Fernando as her mate. Now that he no longer smashed her eggs, Fernando provided her with many healthy children in a safe environment. Her offspring would prove to have a high survival rate, which was all that Ectoparasite mothers could ever want. She would likely be the first tick woman in history to birth children in the hundreds.
But Fernando didn’t really care about that. He would never stop loathing himself or his grotesque family. He would give up on happiness and put all of his attention into being the best Stressman he could be. His wife would fill him with misery and he’d take that misery with him to work every day. And because of his despair, he would keep the town of Gloomsville safe for the rest of his life. He would prove to be the greatest Stressman who ever lived.
And although Fernando would never admit it, deep down he knew that everything about his relationship with the tick woman was just right. They truly were a perfect match.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carlton Mellick III is one of the leading authors of the bizarro fiction subgenre. Since 2001, his books have drawn an international cult following, despite the fact that they have been shunned by most libraries and chain bookstores.
He won the Wonderland Book Award for his novel, Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland, in 2009. His short fiction has appeared in Vice Magazine, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror #16, The Magazine of Bizarro Fiction, and Zombies: Encounters with the Hungry Dead, among others. He is also a graduate of Clarion West, where he studied under the likes of Chuck Palahniuk, Connie Willis, and Cory Doctorow.
He lives in Portland, OR, the bizarro fiction mecca.
Visit him online at www.carltonmellick.com
Table of Contents
AUTHOR’S NOTE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
BONUS COMIC
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carlton Mellick Iii, The Tick People
