The Mother of the Tree of Life, Aleister Hanek [best way to read ebooks txt] 📗

earth like a filthy abscess on a green cheek. The sky above is poison green; the clouds are a swirling vomit yellow. It was easy for him to get here. The Spirit gave him an easy route to follow. According to Melkam The Mother wouldn’t reach paradise by the time he got here. To him it took forever but he is eager, nothing slows down time like anticipation. And he is saving the world from number one hundred; could he rightfully be blamed for being impatient?
Certainly not.
“You haven’t told your men about me?” Melkam had asked him.
“I swear not.” It was the truth.
“Only you are to know about this, if they understood my power they’d send every one. We want her to overestimate me, and to underestimate your hunters.”
“I understand.” He had said, then, impatient, demanded his directions. The spirit explained then vanished. He’s not communicated with the spirit since, doesn’t expect too.
He wasted no time as soon as he arrived. He’s been planting around the perimeter of the Birthing Grounds immediately. She’ll never get past the wall that grows here, surely not, surely no one could.
“No Mercy.” He whispers, and when he stands he finds himself where he started. The wall is planted, his work is done. He can only watch and wait now, watch and wait.
“No Mercy.”

11

Jared almost chokes on an orange rind when he hears the swamp bubble pop.
The environment here is largely forest with paths wide as roads leading to the nearby villages. The most curious thing to see in these woods besides his cabin is a tiny swamp, only twelve feet in diameter standing out like a belly button on the forest’s belly.
Jared hears a huge bubble of poison muck pop from his front porch. He doesn’t fathom how somebody would end up in the quagmire, because that sound tells him there is someone in there.
He spits the orange into the lawn and throws his knife into the porch burying it an inch into one plank. He throws his enormous body into the lawn and runs into the forest to that little spot he only showed the bride once.
Jared drops to his knees and plunges his arm into the muddy poison without a second thought. He knows what it is, he was sick for a week the last time he touched it. But that time was stupidity, and somebody needs his help now. He grabs a shoulder and immediately knows the weight of the poor person. The skin feels soft, it must be a woman.
Or a girl.
Jared plunges his other arm in, grabs the other shoulder and lifts her up. When he pulls her out his hands are sunk to the wrist in her cocoon of mud and poison. The stuff becomes a sticky film over his arms and her body as soon as it touches the air. It has the texture of dry pudding skin. He lays her down on what he thinks is her side then drops on his ass and heaves as though he nearly drowned. She is so much heavier than any person of that size, that muck must be heavier than he though.
Jared grabs the end that must be the head and tears at the elastic muck. It comes away like room temperature caramel and releases a stink nothing like darkened sugar. But the smell is just murky air to him, he’ll flinch at nothing. Concrete and gossamer, concrete and gossamer.
He flings the stuff back into the pool from whence it came and sees his true love for the first time. He doesn’t flinch, not even at this, but he does stop. He does forget that sickness is seeping into his pores.
But he remembers fast, rips that wicked shit from her and he is just like Fool hundreds of years ago ripping apart Julia’s burial wrappings, he rips much of it away from her and lifts her out of the muck bed that molded itself into the grass. He runs to the grass to wash the unconscious girl in his washtub.
Part of him is upset when he sees she is already pregnant.
The air in the cabin feels like death but nourishes his lungs nonetheless. Everything will be preserved by Jared’s love here, just like his wife, dead though it all may seem.
Jared doesn’t look at the woman on the bed as he carries the pregnant girl into their bathroom.
It still smells like bile in here from when his bride threw up in her death throes. The corner where there is neither the bathtub nor the doorway is splattered yellow and red. The wood is dissolved beneath this mess but Jared doesn’t know that, hasn’t dared to clean up yet. Everything happened just this morning.
The tub is already prepared. He had prepared to slip his wife into this water after feeding her. Instead he’d had to wipe off her face and place her in bed. She lays there with crossed arms now, wearing the sundress he gave her on their wedding day.
Jared puts the pregnant girl into lukewarm water, she stays unconscious –she seems dead or unconscious, this is no state of wakefulness—there’s no temperature to shock her awake.
The girls hand comes out of the water and grasps his arm tight enough to put her fingerprints in him. He thinks it’s this girl’s death throes and rigor mortis.
No, he thinks, not two in one day. Please, two in one lifetime is too much.
Then he sees it, she’s as alive as he is, but that muck has gotten inside her. The girl tries to open her mouth and speak but there is no sound, not even a breath for her throat is clogged. She tries to open her eyes but they are glued shut with that muddy poison. Brown drops are sliding out of her ears and nostrils now, he sees.
With his other hand Jared pinches the muck in her eyes then pulls. It gives as much resistance as flesh does. It comes off with a snap and she tries to scream but her throat is still stopped, she just moves like she is screaming. He flicks the wicked shit onto his floor. Her eye darts left and right quick as a skittering animal. She’s awake alright.
His strength is such that he moves his clutched arm despite her stiff grip on him. He takes her jaw in one hand and holds it open for his other. His fingertips dip into muck not two inches passed her lips and he pulls it all out in one big gob, throws it on the floor.
The girl gasps a gust into her throat, sustenance for the lungs. Jared suddenly feels that he shouldn’t touch her.
She heaves breath and for a second he fears she’s gone into labor, but she relaxes gradually. He still feels that he shouldn’t touch her, just as one shouldn’t touch a wolverine with one’s bare hands.
Eventually she pinches the muck in her other eye and pulls it out, she doesn’t flinch this time and flings it against he wall. It sticks there like a tacky booger. Then she pulls the stuff out of her ears and nostrils in the same fashion. She drops her fingers back in the water and breathes, relishes the feeling of closing her eyes for real.
She turns and looks to Jared, who can scarcely focus on every feature on her face, he finds her so beautiful.
“Look away.” She says, with authority, not shame.

12

Mercadia is glad when the giant obeys her. He is solemn to feminine wishes, she can tell.
She waits for a moment and watches him, making sure that he will not sneak a peek at her. She waits a whole minute and he doesn’t even move. He’s like some kind of stone, she can’t decide what. He only breathes; he doesn’t even ask if he can look yet. He is patient, as patient as she wished Andun could have been.
Satisfied by the giant, Mercadia lifts her dress in the water and for all its newness it feels like ragged skin against her. She pushes a few fingers into her anus and pulls what feels like a mile of muck out. This she lifts out of the tub and drops it on the side where the man isn’t sitting. She can’t help but look at it, how like a hellish eel it looks…
Reliving her vagina of the stuff is easier but more painful. She feels like she peeled some of her flesh away on the inside. She feels like she is full of piss but it is actually her urinary tract riddled with the poison.
Melkam said I would vomit. That’ll be relief enough.
Mercadia relaxes and covers herself with her dress again, can finally enjoy being in water. “Thank you for humoring my modesty. You can look now.” He does, and looks so endearingly dumb.
She expects him to speak but his dumbness maintains. She thinks for a second that he is retarded somehow… but then the feeling that Melkam would have something to say about that creeps up. She hates him, it is true, but internally she admits to everything he has said to her. Melkam is indeed the wise plague.
This man is not retarded.
But he is something.
Mercadia smiles for him and knows not how seductive she looks. “Speak to me giant, I would know my rescuers name.”
Lot of good Melkam is after all, I almost died down there. I wonder… I wonder if he’s even on my side.
He hesitates, but finds his words. “My name is Jared, you must be…”
“The Mother. Yes, I am Mercadia.” Mercadia doesn’t know it, but Jared’s heart and penis now throb in synchronicity.
“Yes. I was visited upon by Melkam some time ago. But I married anyway to the woman I was anointed to. I didn’t believe him… didn’t trust him.”
I like you, “I understand. I’ve found him difficult to trust too but I’ve no choice. I’m in great danger you see.”
“The hunters.”
“Yes, and he has mostly been keeping me alive. Except right now, I was alone down there. I’m sure he could have come with me; it is part of his territory, but he did nothing. Not even when I was drowning.”
Jared reaches into the tub and strokes her hair which is still slick with muck. For a moment he cradles her head, and she feels that she may sleep yet. But his hand comes away, dribbled black and he stares at it for a moment. Mercadia is compelled to look at him, he has such focus. She’s never seen such intensity but in the likes of Melkam.
“I will get you some towels and fresh clothes.” He says and he stands up to leave. She is amazed by his size, and with no shortage of shame, wonders for a moment what his clothing hides…
“Thank you Jared.” But he does not seem to hear. His focus is away from her suddenly. She feels sad now, to be disconnected thusly.
As soon as he shuts the bathroom door Mercadia lurches, and all the sickness in her body rushes into her stomach.

13

Jared decides he will leave Mercadia in the tub for now. He’ll check on her soon to see if she’s fallen asleep, if so he’ll rescue her from drowning again and set her in the other bed. His own bed is occupied.
He collects the bride’s shortest dress –Mercadia is at least two feet shorter than her, she’d trip inside any of the other dresses—and three towels from the closet, pauses, and sets them on a chair. His hand shakes, his heart quivers, but the tears are too deep to well up out of his eyes.
Already he