The Misbegotten
The Stuff of Stars - Summer 2018

It was the thump!that awoke me from my slumber. It wasn’ta hallow bump in the night. It wasn’trandom. In fact, it was loud enough tohave shaken the windows next to my bed. The sound originated from the other side of the house, on the groundfloor.

I sat up, or tried to at least. But a sizeable piece of Sandy’s upper bodypinned me to the bed. Gently, I liftedher shoulder just enough so I could slide from underneath her. I came erect, sitting on the edge of the bed,my ears straining to hear anything.

For ten seconds, I heard nothing.

It was after that I heard it – a faint cross between acackle and a squawk. When my earsdetected it a second time, I realized there was a touch of a screech to it aswell. It hadn’t come from a throatthough. It was a low tone,discrete. I wouldn’t have heard it if Ihadn’t been listening as intent as I had.

It came again, a short while later, but from a differentdirection this time.

I turned my head and found myself looking out one ofthe windows nearest my bed. This one facedthe back of the house.

One more time, I heard it, from the side of the house.

The more I heard it, the more I was certain it waselectronic in nature. I couldn’t placeit, but it did not sound like it issued from anything living.

I stood, methodic, not wanting to make noise. I glanced over at the digital clock on thenightstand.

4:55 am.

I crept toward the windows at the back of the house,hearing the strange sound with greater frequency than before. More and more tones were springing up allaround the property.

All the windows were open. It was yet another clear, warm summernight. I could see the balcony on thesecond floor, overlooking the large, wooden structure that kept the patio undershade. Beyond the cover of the wood, Icould see the waters of the swimming pool and the Hot Tub shimmering in thepre-dawn night. There was no moon, maybeit had sunk below the horizon already. Only the stars twinkled down through the veil of the heavens. There was little wind. The only sounds I could hear, other than thestrange electronic warbles, were the far away thumps coming from El Sereno.

It was much bigger battle now, having spread east tothe verges of Alhambra, Granada Park and across Interstate 10. The northern vestiges of Monterey Park toowere under siege. The NIA was rootingout the original Muto strongholds. Only,they were seeing new ones pop up along the outer borders of Muto-heldterritory. In some cases, non-Mutopopulations were now joining the fray. The whole situation was a powder keg ready to explode.

I pulled the curtain a few more inches to the side, soI could see more of the backyard. I didso with agonizing patience. I didn’twant undo movement to attract the eye, should there be eyes watching the house.

I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. The yard looked just as we’d left it hoursearlier. My mother had called us in toget cleaned up and help her with dinner. We had cleaned up the lawn surrounding the concrete of the pool and HotTub. Everything was as we left it clearof toys, rafts, etc. There was nothingout of the ordinary to see.

At the back of the property was the stout,double-sided wooden fence. It surroundedthe huge two-acre plot my parents owned along three sides. It was ten feet tall and thick, held up bysturdy four-by-four inch posts, driven deep into the ground at four footintervals.

Between the fence and the lawn was a thin two to threefoot strip of land, following the edge of the yard as well. It was a long, but thin garden of varyingflowering plants, hedge brushes and vines. Despite the summer heat, it was still in perfect condition thanks to thegardener who came every Wednesday. Ittoo looked as it should, a pristine plot of earth, manicured as usual.

Something caught and held by vision.

I froze, leaning forward, trying to make it out. I wanted to do without leaning out of the windowitself. So, I stayed in the shadows. I blinked a few times and rubbed at my eyes toclear my sight. I squinted through thedark, holding my breath, making myself as steady as I could manage.

Then, I realized what I was seeing – a red light. It was a tiny, glowing crimson light, dippingin and out of sight at the back of the yard. It was in the foliage, in the narrow garden.

I shifted my body to the side jam of the window. Still, I was hearing those weird electronicwarbles, more of them in fact, chirping at a greater rate. Two more of those ghost-like, red pinpricksof light came into view. They weretoward the back of the yard as well, but alongside the southern section offence.

I moved to the window next to the one I’d been lookingout. I went to my right, closer to thenightstand where I kept my digital clock/radio/MP3 player, a lamp and my cellphone. I always kept it there, chargingthroughout the night. I glanced aroundthe Loft, furtive, birdlike before peering out this new window.

Everyone was still sleeping, no one had moved.

Then, I saw them - four more oddly suspended lights. Again red! These were in the plants in a long row on the northern face of thefence. I was so confounded; I didn’tknow what to do. When I gazed back atthe back of the fence, from my new vantage, three additional lights came intoview. They were like of flock of hellishfireflies infesting the backyard.

Something… or someone… had surrounded the back yard inits entirety.

On four separate tendrils, from four unknown recessesin my brain, thoughts began to coalesce into one. I felt my scalp prickle with terror. Oh god,no!

As I dove for my cell phone, Ramona sat up, throwingthe smaller girls from her body.

I grabbed for the smart device, ripping the chargingcord from the bottom of it.

“What is it, babe?” she whispered, hoarse with sleep.

I ignored her, swiping across the Gorilla Glass,initiating the phone from sleep mode. Ididn’t bother entering my “swipe” code to access the applications. I didn’t need to do that to replace what I waslooking for, and it didn’t take long to replace it either. Right there, in the upper right corner, inthe notification bar, I saw it. It wasthat small icon depicting the type of connection my phone was set toacquire. There as another one showing mysignal strength. Both of them had red“X’s” over them, screaming at me!

Someone had cut off my phone from both the network andthe local hotspot. The fact they'ddisabled my parents’ wireless router downstairs in the Library gave me thewillies.

They were both jammed!

“…Also, ifthere is ever a time where all your cell phones don’t work, he said torun…”

Jacob’s final warning resounded in my head like thetoll of mission bells. There were hundredsof them, all different sizes and sounds.

Oh no, no,no, no, nononono! Fuck!

I ran to the opposite of the Loft, toward the front ofthe house, coming to stand between the air mattresses. One was empty, upon the other Flavia wassleeping soundlessly.

Jolene and Johan were still sleeping in Katie’s bed,since Tirza decided she was going to sleep with the rest of us.

I stared out the window nearest to Katie’s bed.

Behind me, I heard Ramona waking the girls with hushedtones.

On Katie’s bed Jolene stirred and turned over, rollingout of Johan’s grasp.

I saw them. They were beyond the front lawn on the other side of the driveway,gathered in the street. There seemed tobe an entire fleet of black sedans, SUV’s and other wicked looking tacticalvehicles. A few even had huge .50 cal. gunsmounted on top.

Others appeared to have high velocity water cannonsattached. These provided less lethaloptions for suppressing a large group of people.

From all the way back to the sidewalk, down the entirepathway to the main entry of the house, were scores of those floating, infraredlights.

Only now, I could make out they were attachments to apair of goggles. They were the batterylight indicators of night vision goggles. Shit!

Dark, uniformed figures, booted and armed to theteeth, were wearing these high-powered glasses. Every now and again one of these figures would touch something at histhroat. That strange, low-pitched squealwould sound. It was the engaging squawkof their communicators I had heard earlier, and it could only mean one thing.

Northern Intercontinental Alliance Shock-troopers!

They werecoming to kill my family!

I dropped to my knees and shook Katie’s bed. “You guys, wake-up! Hurry!” I was whispering, but my voice strangled with intensity.

Jolene rolled over to me about to say something.

“Don’t make a sound!” I warned bringing my forefinger to my lips.

She froze.

“Wake up my brother and sister. Tell them to get on their shoes, theirbackpacks and get their guns. We got toleave now!” I left her trembling in my wake as Ire-crossed the large room. The othergirls were standing now, side by side, nervous, hands wringing, teeth bitingnails. I could hear Jolene was followingmy orders. “Get your shit, ladies, thefucken NIA is on our god damned doorstep!” I rasped and began to throw on myshoes.

I saw Tirza reach for her clothes, ones she had laidout to change into in the morning.

“Teezee, forget your clothes. We don’t have the time. Just get on your shoes and backpack and armyourself. This could get nasty quick!”

She nodded like a doe caught in the headlights of anoncoming car.

“Hurry!” I demanded.

They were blurs of motion in the wink of an eye.

Three seconds after, I heard, and then felt, aconcussion from below. BLAMM! Something big had just exploded at the front of the house.

It made us all stop and stare at each other for asecond.

Then, a massive billow of flame and smoke erupted upalong that side of the house. It bathedus in its’ furious light in an instant.

“Come one, hurry!” I yelled, no longer attemptingquiet.

I had just flipped the safety off my .50 cal. DesertEagle with my thumb when the staccato racket of gunfire sounded in myears. I paused.

That had comefrom inside the fucking house!

Frantic now, I retraced how we’d arranged who wouldsleep where before went to bed. All webig kids were to sleep in the Loft. Mymom and the two little ones were to sleep in the Master Suite she shared withmy step-dad. Pop was to keep a loose“watch” from the TV room, where he had no doubt fallen asleep hours earlier.

Comprehension hit me like a thunderbolt.

“Daaaaaad! Noooooo! Daaaaaad, wake-up! Wake-up! Wake-up!” I screamed like a frantic oldlady, on and on, unable to stop.

Just like I didn’t realize it was me yelling for mystep-dad, neither did I realize I was no longer in the same place. I was streaking across the Loft for thedoor. I did not hear at least three ofthe girls yell for me to wait.

I would later come to understand that in the flush ofpure emotional impetus my Mutation could change me. This was the one making me denser, not thehorny one. This increase of mass couldsometimes occur all by itself. In mostinstances, it was exponential to the emotions I felt. Since this was a matter of life or death, youcan well imagine what it did to my person.

When I hit the door of the Loft, I did so with suchforce; I went through it. I found myselfatop the landing of the stairs leading down to the second floor. I stood in a pile of wood chips andsplinters.

I didn’t take the time to assess what I’d done. I had no time to take notice. I swept down the stairs, so fast; it was amazingI didn’t fall. But, I did crack eachstep as I barreled down to the floor below.

My mother already flung open the door of the MasterSuite. My two youngest siblings –standing on either side – were each clutching a leg of her pajama bottoms.

I had made it two-thirds down the nineteen stepsleading up to the Loft. I was about tocall out to her, to scream at her to go back into her bedroom. But, I got distracted by a bright, halogenlight.

It fastened beneath some sort of black object,tapering at one end. Holding it tightagainst a flexing shoulder was one of the same dark figures I’d seen in thefront yard. He had just attained thelanding of the extra-wide staircase coming up from the first floor. The angle of his body swept from his left toright.

For a moment, I could tell he didn’t see my mom standingthere in the doorway to her bedroom.

In that split second, although to me it seemed alifetime, I realized my mom had something in her hand. It was dark, metallic – ballistic.

She saw the trooper at the same time he saw her, butshe had seen his light long before he was able to shine it upon her. She had the jump on him.

I canremember this with such detail, because, as I said before, everything was movingat a snail’s pace.

I saw her right hand began to raise, her right legbeginning to take a half-step forward. She bent at the knee, her left hand coming up to cup the bottom of herright, like instructors taught her.

After my biological father had threatened to breakinto our old house and beat the shit out of her, she’d bought someprotection. She was remembering hertraining. She was shifting into ashooters’ stance.

It was then I understood, it was her six-round, .38Special she held in her hands. My mindexploded. I shrieked, “NOOOOOO!!!!”

The light under the sub-machine gun of the trooperblinded her for no more than a millisecond.

She fired.

Her bullet took him in his Kevlar helmet, but notwhere it could do any damage. It hit himright where the hinge of his goggles met the metal of his domedhead-covering. It ricocheted harmlesslyinto the wall, dividing the hallway from Flavia’s room.

His goggles ripped to one side, straps cutting him. It took him a second and a half to refocushis eyes. He was no longer peeringthrough the concave, magnified display. He was gazing with his own orbs now and it took his brain just a tiny amountof time to adjust.

It wasn’t a long duration of time by any means, but itwas long enough for me to raise the hand cannon I was carrying. I sighted down the length of the barrel.

We were both trained shooters. For me it was a periodic thing, an excitingadventure I went on every once and a while. For him, it was a way of life. Hetrained with his weapon every god damned day!

And because of it, he was faster.

I had just applied pressure to the trigger of my gun,when the mussel of his Heckler and Koch MP6 blazed. Yellow flashes, faster than my eyes couldregister, hurt my brain. I was flyingdown the stairs. I was almost certain atone point I was airborne. I can’t sayfor sure though.

But, the sight before me has untold clarity. It's burned into the center of mypsyche. I can’t fucking escape it! Though, I have been trying to do just thatfor more years than I care to remember.

Lucia, to me, had always been the most beatific childI had ever had the pleasure to know. Andtrust me, I’ve known and cared for many, many children in my lifetime. Yet, to this day, I say Lucia held thecake. She was downright and disgustinglyadorable. Her squarish head and lightbrown, super-fine straight hair, her rose colored lips and full cheeks made itso.

I have long wondered what she would’ve looked like ifshe matured. Her body having grown intowomanhood, but I can never seem to finish the thought. I am plagued the events of my past and mymind won’t let me.

I know now, I am a bad person. I’ve done horrible things and have been abusiness man in the most debased sort of businesses. I know, in my heart, the day I changed. I know the instant when I decided either letthe world continue to fuck me or I'd fuck it myself. It was that day. It was because of what happened.

The trooper’s second, third and fifth bullets tookLucia, right in the head. It popped likea melon.

His first took my mother’s knee cap. So devastating, it severed her leg.

His fourth, sixth and seventh bullets hit Martín inthe shoulder and chest.

They shredded my wild, fun-loving little brother topieces. They reduced my cherubic,precious baby sister to hamburger.

As my youngest siblings flew back by the violence ofthe trooper’s bullets, my mother began to fall.

He unloaded his clip into her body as I fired. The tremendous punch of my .50 caliber roundtook him in the shoulder and cleaved his arm clean from his body.

That is where I don’t remember much and things get alittle foggy.

I remember I was still running, but I don’t recallthrowing my gun aside.

I know for a fact, I collided with something biggerand bulkier than me, but I have no details to convey. I have an impression, though it is vague, ofsmashing through the double-paned, sliding glass doors. They led onto the second floor balcony. I remember the pushing. I can almost remember there was somethingwith a descent amount of bulk before me.

The next thing I can unearth, from this age-old mind,is hitting the cast-iron railing surrounding to outermost edges of thatbalcony. I know they bent, because I canstill hear the metal screeching as it stretched and snapped and twisted. I can see it as plain as day. I have a cloudy notion; I had been carryingsomeone in my grasp the entire time. When I hit the railing, he was between me and the metal. My legs were pinning his in place, but hisupper body had only one option. Theproblem was it could go places the lower part of him couldn’t.

I heard a thunderous snap, and the man in the uniformbent into the shape of a backward “L” before my eyes. I ruined his spine with the sheer velocity Iunleashed upon him. Combined with theincreased mass within my body, he snapped like a twig.

I felt something tickling me along my entire leftside. For the life of me, I couldn’tfigure out why someone would be fucking tickling me at a time like this.

The impression was wrong though.

I swiveled at the waist and saw another trooper comingthrough the shattered sliding glass door. The muzzle of his sub-machine gun danced with light. It did not register in my mind. I was more focused on the tactical, Kevlarhelmet he was wearing. I kept wonderingwhy it was getting bigger, as if it were growing like some fantastic organism.

And why washe still tickling my stomach?

The last word had just left my awareness when Irealized the helmet was gone and so was the trooper. Where’dhe go? I asked myself, confused and, for what seemed like a few seconds, Istood there. Until I saw a boot at myfeet and looked down to stare at it.

It was the trooper or most of him. His head was missing and so was the helmet.

Where had itgone?

There was blood everywhere, huge swaths it drenchingthe balcony, the outer wall of the house, me too.

“Estefan, we have to leave!” screamed Flavia, pullingmy arm, forcing me to gaze into her eyes and not the bloodbath around us. She was yanking me for all she wasworth. “Come one, there are more of themcoming!” She was in a frenzy, her facewas puffy from weeping. Her nails werebiting into my arm, but I felt no pain.

I stepped over the feet of the dead trooper and backinto the house. I ran past thebalustrades surrounding the stairs, leading down to the first floor.

I had only taken one step past the railings when myentire back riddled with pinpricks. Itwas three, maybe four, times as many as before, but I didn’t dare turn thistime.

Rather, I pulled Flavia closer to me. I was effective in shielding her from thebarrage of bullets pelting the center-mass of my body.

I looked ahead, down the main hallway of the secondfloor. I could see the others running inthe same direction my step-sister had wanted me to go. The passage was nothing but bobbingheads. They disappeared one after theother around as they followed the hall, turning left. They were running toward Johan’s bedroom.

“YOU MOTHERFUKCERS ARE KILLING MY FAMILY!”

It was so loud. It stopped me cold. I moved myhead in the direction of the monstrous bellow, and found Katie standing on thethird step from the bottom of staircase.

At least, it looked like my cousin, and yet, it didnot.

She was still wearing the loose-fitting tank top andmatching, butt-hugging shorts she had worn to bed. Her feet she encased in her best pair ofsneakers. Her backpack was still slungover both shoulders. In her right hand,she still clutched the 9mm Glock 23 I had given her to protect herself. That was where the resemblance stopped.

It was her eyes that were different now. Gone was the pearly-white surrounding thehazel irises I had loved to look into for most of my life. They were bright, illuminant, so much so, itwas painful to gaze upon them. Thereseemed to be no eyeballs in the sockets. Instead, there was some roiling, seething quagmire of searing magma madeof the purest white I had ever seen. Butthat was not all, her lips had changed as well. No longer were they thin or pink. Rather, they were swollen and beat-red, glowing as if flame burnedbeneath the skin. The inside of hermouth swam with fire as well. She wasawesome to look upon, but fierce and gruesome as well. The muscles in her neck strained withtension, her jaw rigid with fury. Herface was a mask of pure, unadulterated hatred. It was a cast upon that lovely visage that was shocking to see.

I saw the harsh flashlights the troopers had attachedunder the barrels of their weapons train on my beloved Katie. I knew they had seen her and were aiming forher.

“Nooooo!” Iscreamed as I heard the first gun fire, then I heard another… and another.

No, not myKatie too! was all I could think as Ifelt despair suck the life out of my heart and waited for her to be shreddedright before my eyes.

But that didn’t happen.

I watched her mouth began to move. The thundering voice I had heard momentsbefore wailed anew, “DDDDIIIIEEEEEE!” With the elongation of that word she uttered, came the fire.

This wasn’t the sort of fire you’d see in thefireplace or at a campground. Thiswasn’t a raging industrial fire, infused with chemicals, dancing withhuman-like form. This wasn’t a jet fuelfire or a rockets’ fire either. This wasgreater, more intense and infinitely more powerful. The only way I can describe its rightful characterto you is to write, it was the stuff at the center of a star.

Yes, this is what I saw that morning - The Stuff of Stars.