The New Flesh

It looked like a small brown puppy. Its ears curled slightly at the sides and it panted irregularly.
They brought it home in a shoe box and laid it on the bed where they sat watching as they drank cool shots of vodka until dawn began bleeding.
"You look so nice in your orange suit", he said to her with that twinkle in his eye.
She was putting on her make-up and turned to face him and said "Johnny, we made this, ain’t it beautiful?"
"Sandra, anything that came out of you would be beautiful."
It moved a little on the bed and yawned showing stained yellow teeth and the curvature of a sharpened chiseled fang.
Soon they were lying next to their box of moving flesh panting.
Johnny moved with slow and ponderous lust across her swollen belly and she screamed until his ears were throbbing.
Afterwards he lay there smoking and she licked the top of the burning cigarette. There was the sound of sirens outside as she stood admiring her swollen tongue in the mirror.
Behind her Johnny tipped vodka on the head that jutted out of the shoe box.
"They like that", he said. "Tips them over towards humanity."
"You talk so clever Johnny, I can’t understand what you’re saying sometimes", Sandra said.
"Making them drink makes them human."
"Oh yeah?"
She walked over to him and stroked his head, running her long nails through his matted hair and resting his head against her breasts.
"Feeding time. I need to suckle it", she said.
"And when its mouth is full of your milk it will be human."
He lifted the small brown creature out of the box and Sandra took it and placed one of her nipples in its mouth. She rolled her eyes and seemed to inhabit some brief sphere of ecstasy before she began screaming.
She threw it down on the bed.
"Look what it’s done to my tit", she said. Blood was pouring from her nipple and she reached for the knife that lay on the dresser.

"I’ll hack its head off."
Johnny took the knife from her and held her until she started sobbing.
They did not hear the footsteps in the hallway.
On the bed the small brown creature bled.
Johnny had stuck it with the knife while he held Sandra in his tattoed arms.
The police cars outside formed an orderly line along the avenue.
Neighbours stood at their garden gates.
When Sandra saw that Johnny had stuck the thing they had brought there she poked and prodded the wound, listening intently to the shrill shriek like a child that has found an insect to torture.
"Do you think my tits will be all right?" she said.
"They’re always all right, you just keep em in that dress of yours when we go out."
"Oh Johnny."
"Well call me romantic."
"I’ll call you whatever you want."
"We do seem to make a lot of babies."
"An the doctors told me I was infertile."
"Just shows how wrong they can be."
"I’ve lost track of all the children I’ve had. How many a month is it?"
"Honey I don’t know, I never was much good at rithmetic."
She stood preening herself before the mirror.
"They’re never as good-looking as us", she said.
"We’s pretty neat, it’s a hard thing to do."
"How did we meet again Johnny?"
"I told you."
"Tell me again."
"We been living together for a year now."
"I know, but before that."
"You and I belong to a club."
"I ain’t no member of no club."
"Yes you are."
"Which club?"
"The Society For The Betterment Of Mankind."
"Oh yeah, I remember."
She put on her top and looked vaguely out of the window.
"Time to feed baby", Johnny said, and he passed it to her.
But the small brown thing wrestled free of his grip and shot across the floor and hid under a cupboard.
They got a wire coat hanger and opened it up until it was a sharp point and stuck it under the cupboard until the thing began shrieking again.
Just then the door burst open and two police officers entered.
They held guns pointed at them.
Johnny and Sandra lay on the floor while they cuffed them.
They led them out through the front door into the street where a swarm of neighbours stared and talked among themselves.
As the car sped away the only shapes visible to the prying eyes were the blurred outlines of their orange suits.
Two neighbours waited behind and talked.
"Escaped from a nuthouse", one said.
"What was that thing?"
"Sandra could never have kids and went crazy cause of it. She catches animals, thinking they’re her baby."
"What does the guy do?"
"He tortures animals."
"When she realises she ain’t holding a baby he kills it?"
"That’s about the sum of it."
"Fuckin sickos. Good thing they’re locking em up."
They went back inside their houses while Sandra and Johnny were being held down and injected with medication.
Sandra tried biting one of the nurses who hit her and stuck the needle deep into her buttock.
Soon she fell into a comatose sleep while Johnny lay tied to his bed and passed the night without stirring.
Outside the station the police officers were looking at the animal.
"Seems OK," one said.
"You’d think even a whacko like her would smell it ain’t a baby."
"That’s delusions for you, nuts like them believe their own fantasises and shape the world to suit them."
"Think he’ll survive?"
"Yeah."
They let it out of the box and it fled into some undergrowth.
Apart from the wound which was closing up it looked unharmed.
The next morning Sandra shuffled along the sterile corridor in search of Johnny.
She found him watching a nature programme on TV.
"Johnny?" she said.
"Yeah?"
"I think I’m pregnant."
"That’s good honey, that’s real good."

"Feeding Time"
Copyright: © 2010 Richard Godwin
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Richard Godwin is a produced playwright and his stories can be found at many magazines, among them A Twist Of Noir and Danse Macabre, as well as in the recent anthologies 'Back In Five Minutes' by Little Episodes Publishing and 'Howl' by Lame Goat Press.

If you want to check out his writing credentials further you can find them here at his blog, just click the portfolio link http://www.richardgodwin.net/