Judy can see the thick clumps dripping from the toes to the
ground, crushed organs and pulverized bone, nothing but dirt on the hulking
appendages on Mary's foot.
- It was a joke – says the teenager, after an uncomfortable
silence.
Judy looks up and sees her daughter flushed, even
embarrassed.
- ... the cleaning my toes, I'm sorry. I mean… I thought it
would be funny if I – she continues, looking away from her mother at her feet, for
something to focus on – I think, now, I'll go to the bathroom to clean the… you
know.
The gigantic teenager heads to the bathroom with awkward
step, supporting only the heel of her right foot.
- I'll clean that up right away - she says from the
bathroom.
She normally finds it cute to see such a powerful, yet young
apex trying to deal with awkward situations. It would be funny to see her
scurry away in embarrassment from her own bad joke, except that the awkward way
she limps as she walks away is her way of avoiding muddying the floor with
what's left of Samuel. In front of Judy is the other part of the man's remains,
a slowly spreading pool of blood, some teeth, and a shoe with a foot still
inside. That foot walked into this house. The little woman finds her own lack
of empathy so uncomfortable. In the couple of months that she met him, she
learned to know him and trust him, she shared with him things that were very
important to her, including her life with her children. Outside of herself,
Samuel must have been the person who knew the most about Lester and Mary, he
could have been a great friend to the apex teenager, a wise adviser, but now
he's a mass of liquefied meat soon to disappear down the drain, and that fact doesn't
make her feel the slightest bit of guilt, or pity. She didn't feel guilty
either with the games she played with Mary's father years before, when she
chose and he used minis and tainys on his apex muscles, as toys, or as cream.
A piece of wet toilet paper rolls across the floor in front
of Judy. In an instant, any trace of Samuel disappears, lost in the piece of
paper that Mary crushes within her clenched fist.
- Mom – she puts her left hand behind her head and her right
fist that holds the paper, behind her back -, I know the joke was in bad taste,
and I'm sorry.
The young woman who looms large in front of Judy pauses,
waiting for an answer, still avoiding her gaze, embarrassed. How could Judy
feel guilty for the decisions of someone so powerful, how could she, in her
insignificance and weakness, be responsible for the actions of a being as
superior as Mary. Even at her short seventeen years, she has achieved more
power and importance than she or her son will ever know.
- I understand that you didn't mean it, Mary, but there is a
time and a place to jokes, - Judy tries to use the fact that Mary apologizes
for a bad joke, but not for killing a tainy, to wake up from the adoration she
tends to feel in front of an apex – I don't want to think that you murdered my
friend just for the fun of it, so would you mind explaining, young lady?
- Oh, sure – the teenager smiles, relaxing a bit -. You see,
I didn't know who the bug was until…
- Please - Judy interrupts -, don't call him “bug”, I'm a
tainy too.
- Oh, but you are my mom, not a bug, it has nothing to do
with it. Anyway, I didn't know who "he" was until he talk about being
a teacher at my school.
- So you knew him.
- No, but I knew who he was, and I knew that he had a
daughter. He confirmed it to me while I was halfway through making him into a
foot moisturizer, remember? The thing is that I know his daughter, or rather, I
knew her...
- Don't tell me that you...
- That's a funny story – the smile only grows on the
teenager's face as she reviews her memories -, you see, during lunch, since I
was in the park, I changed my school shirt for my green t-shirt, Do you
remember which one, the one you bought me last week? Anyway, I was sitting next
to a tree with my friends and suddenly, I see that a little further away is
this tainy, wearing the same damn shirt as me.
- Don't tell me that by wearing the same shirt you...
- No, of course not mom! It wasn't for wearing the same
shirt, what do you think I am, a psycho? No, but I did know it was
unacceptable, so I told her she had to take it off, right away. And do you know
what she replied to me?... She said no!, she started to talk something about
her not wearing anything underneath or something like that, can you believe it?
The little THING did decide that it was more important for her not to show her
tits in public than to obey me? ME!!! So I told her that if she didn't take it
off herself, I was going to do it, and I was going to shove it up her ass.
- Oh my God - Judy whispers.
- I warned her mom, believe me. But there are people you
just can't reason with, so I grabbed her from the group she was with and ripped
her shirt off, and what do you think? It was true, she wasn’t wearing anything
underneath, she was topless, but who cares, it was a couple grains of rice if
you ask me. She started screaming and apologizing, but I had already given her
my word, so I ripped off the shorts she was wearing, rolled up the shirt, and
started shoving it up her ass. It wasn't easy, have you ever tried to thread a
very, very small needle with a very thick thread? The little bug started
kicking and writhing, but I wasn't going to be a liar, so I kept pushing and in
the end, I managed to get the whole shirt inside her, and well, when I was
there, the question had to be asked, you know ? How far up her ass could the
shirt go? So I kept pushing, by then other apex had gathered around me to cheer
me on. I could feel the tiny friends of the tainy protesting against my feet,
but I didn't let them distract me, I already had, like, the entire first
phalanx of my finger inside her, I had to finish. You should have seen me mom, I
was like, super focused. A thick, dark liquid began to come out of her mouth
and dripped onto my fingers, disgusting. I never knew when she had stopped
moving, and suddenly, the tip of the roll poked out of the liquid, I kept
pushing, and the rolled up shirt came out completely and fell to the ground
along with all the organs that I had pushed out of her body! You should have
seen that fucking shirt, mom, it was like, the best roll in the history of
rolls, I guess everyone thinks I'm super good at doing weed joints now, because
that fucking roll went right through that tainy's stupid body and came out
exactly the way it came in, It didn't fall apart one bit. Everyone started
celebrating, as if I scored a goal or something. It was amazing, I swear.
Annoyed by her daughter's blissful expression as she told how
she ripped up the body of a little tainy, Judy looked down, but found only the
young woman's feet, which seemed as happy as the rest of Mary. Her toes
clenched and expanded with each jolt in the story, rubbing against each other
and pounding against the ground with the force of a herd of running elephants,
also pushing the dank stench of sweat and lockdown from a full day at school.
On the back of the feet, the tendons stood out and disappeared under the skin
with the movement of the toes, huge and thick as the masts of an ancient ship,
the kind that used sails, powerful, reminding her that even the smallest
movement of her daughter implies strength beyond imagination. For a moment, she
feels the need to crawl on her knees to those terrible toes of hers and worship
them, hug them and massage them, no matter how much sweat and smell covers
them. But she immediately controls herself, reminding herself that it is her
daughter that she has in front.
- So, on the same day, you killed the daughter and the
father... why?
- Pff, please, mom. When the guy found out that someone
turned his daughter into a meat ring, he was going to be all depressed and
bored, and I know you, I'm sure you'd feel sorry for him and stay with him to
comfort him and help him get over his terrible loss and all that. You have too
soft a heart, mom, he was going to drag you into years of depression, besides,
he was going to eventually find out that I was the one who killed his
bug-daughter and he was never going to be able to do anything directly against
me to get revenge, imagine if he would try to harm you, or Lester, just to
annoy me, fragile as you are. No thank you very much. Besides, I did him a
favor, he died not knowing that his daughter was dead, and I thought of you
too, saving you a lot of drama. Am I a great daughter, or am I a great
daughter?
Judy wants to be mad at her daughter right now, she looks up
at her, sees the little shorts that expose her long, toned legs almost
completely, sees her well-defined midriff for all the world to see, from where
she's standing, almost between the teenager's bare feet, she sees her bare
underboobs, she has told her that she exposes too much skin, but she doesn't
care either, Judy sees her proud smile, very high up, and she wants to
reprimand and punish her. But it's not what she feels. She has a twisted sense
of pride for Mary, because everything she's seen her do, the brutal execution
of a defenseless man, the torture of the man she herself had chosen to share
her bed, all springs from a place of love. Love for her mother, love for her brother
and the need to protect them, to take care of them, even if it is from the
consequences of her own immature decisions. Even the death of Nicole, Samuel's
daughter, seems logical to her, every apex lives with the constant certainty of
their own superiority, that their decisions must be respected by any other
race, and how to deny them that certainty, how to contradict it and explain to Mary
that Nicole had her own decisions, when an immature and dependent adolescent
does not need more than the tip of her finger to dismantle a disobedient tainy.
Her mother doesn't seem as happy with the story as the other
apex that were with her at the time, but it's to be expected, after all the
person who got the worst of the experience was a tainy, Mary thinks she
wouldn't be either delighted if someone told her the story of how they hurt an
apex, unless that apex is an idiot, like some she knows at school. Normally
when angry, her mother refuses to let her pick her up and chooses to go
anywhere herself, even if it takes forever more to cross the house.
- Do you want me to pick you up, mom?
- Please - the petite woman replies, watching intently as
the huge muscular plates expand and dance under the skin of the teen's legs as
she crouches.
- Tell me where.
The short walk to the kitchen ends any serious feelings of
annoyance from Judy. Traveling sitting in her daughter's palm, surrounded by
fingers that curl over her protectively, brings a feeling of security that she
doesn't find anywhere else in her life. She enjoyed the same way with Mary's
dad, the sex was amazing, it's true, but one of her favorite things was the
security provided. The hand that holds her, and which could pulverize her
bones, her organs, and her muscles with the most insignificant effort of its
intricate muscles, also stands between her and any danger, great or small, that
tries to harm her from the outside world. Knowing that the same immense power
of Mary protects Lester brings her a peace that she can never thank her
daughter enough for. Compared to that, Samuel's death feels to Judy like losing
a sex toy, inconsequential fun. Nicole seems even less to her than that, a
useless accessory that came with the toy, nothing more.
- The elevator is working for you to go back to the floor,
so I left you at the counter, I'm going to take a shower. Today was hot as hell,
I bet I stink. Good thing I'm not the guy between my toes - she says as she
walks off to the bathroom – Says Mary, while crushing one final time the paper
in her fist before throwing it to the trash.
Judy sees her daughter throwing away the paper with the
broken toy and listens the rumble of footsteps that fades. She feels the rumble
under her own feet as well. She's grateful for everything Mary gives her,
whether the apex knows it or not, but you can't let a teenager know something
like that, so while she's making dinner for her son and herself, she buys
Mary's dinner on an app and decides that she is going to take a tour to her daughter's
room. She'll make sure the teen harnesses some of her immeasurable physical
power and superiority to tidy up her room and shake up the apex furniture, just
to remind her that she can't go around crushing her things and joking about it.