Talking to critters was not like conversing with mother, but they said things that I understood.  Most of what they said was how hungry they were, or that they wanted out of the things I kept them in.  I kept notes on certain ones, and grabbed others.  They wanted me to bring them other insects and beings to eat, and I would give them other things as food, but not other little slug creatures.  So I did plenty of catch and release for science;  it was my science.

Frogs were I think the first critters to know who I was.  It was just a plain fact to them that I was who I was, they were not complicated beings, but they knew what they knew.  I accepted being God to frogs at a very early age.  It may have been frogs or snakes who told the others that I was God, someone did.

My mother was irritated by me talking to critters, and relating that they thought me God.  She was a big talker about God;  she hated God and blamed him for letting the smoke fucker get at her.  Of course I knew that the smoke screwwer was the reason I was here.  It seemed OK to me that smoke got me to my cabin in the woods.  I liked life and all I was learning, and loved the fresh crisp air mornings, and the moist creatures in my hands that told me their problems like I was their doctor, instead of their observer.

What mother said about God was, “I was damn well minding my own business sitting in bed reading a novel written by the ancient author Stephen King.  It was entertaining, and about good and evil.  The name of the damnable thing was The Stand and then this spirit just went under my quilt.  I saw it and it was without form, like dark brown smoke.

My father and mother were downstairs and I screamed for them as the smoke went into my pee hole.  It felt like about 3 fingers stuck in me Elmer.  I could not pull it out.  It was just in there moving like a washing machine cleaning clothes..  It didn’t feel bad, but at first it hurt.  It scared the bejeebers out of me.  I was just a fifteen year old girl.”

“Could it have been a dream mother?” I usually asked when she told the story,  I asked it right then in the story.

“I would have liked to believe that very thing, and my parents also tried to believe that it was smoke that blew up inside me, until you began to grow inside me.

My mother Darlene took me to the doctor Elmer.  We went to our doctor in Tire City, and he was not much of a medical doctor, but some kind of scientist, but he said my mother was wrong.  He said, ‘Darlene, little Isie has somehow had a man’s penis inside her.  The thing is, she has no tumor or cancer growth, but is making either a girl or boy baby.  From the swell I think it will pop out in the next three weeks.’

‘We thought she was getting fat.’  Mother said.

Well then it began.  mother said, “They argued with me day and night to tell, reveal, get off my chest, ‘Who screwed you little Isie.’

My parents brought neighbors over to reason with me.  Because of the neighbors, I surmise, the church found out.  I didn’t like sitting on hard board seats on Sunday anyway, well the Church of Christ Science Mormon Forgiveness found out about you Elmer and put us out like rejected puppies.  My whole family ws taken off the church register, and thereby,  by many church goers thoughts, we were headed straight to a burning pit of  Hell Fire.  If you want to believe such nonsense.  We don’t have to Elmer, not way out here in the beautiful forest.

So, half the Township of Tire said my father had ‘buried the sausage’ in my pee hole, and some believed the smoke tale, and a minority said I was the whore from the Bible, the ‘other Mary’.  It got so bad Elmer that my parents bought the place away from other humans where we couldn’t be hurt.  Some people would see me walking with you on the street, or carrying you in my arms, and they would say, ‘Puff, puff, puff’.  That meant they were going to burn me to death as a witch.  They had meetings about doing it.

So we came out here dear Elmer, out to the end of the last northern place.  Where no one would walk this far to burn up a witch.  One old wicked crazy woman kept saying around town,  ‘There was only one virgin birth of Jesus, and we won’t have any virgin smoke births in Tire.’  You should have seen how she contorted her face Elmer when she said those words.  Some people would  just turn away from us and hide their eyes, and others would say when walking away, ‘Don’t suffer the witch to live.’

So we moved to this peaceful place Elmer, and for your first 3 years son, my parents brought us food and essentials.  They could only come 3 or 4 times a year.  They had to tie things to a mule and pack the load up mountain paths.  We’re 40 miles from nowhere by mulepath.  No one comes this way, no one but a witch like me.  I didn’t even know what a witch was, then.  All the books came from the doctor scientist’s father who lived up here his last few years.  His bones were sitting in the living room soft chair when we first got here.  We buried them by the big tree outside, the one near the shit hole.

When you were three Elmer no one came with the food and I had gathered very little, we were starving slowly,  and it was very cold.  I was getting weak.  I couldn’t even get up the energy to walk the path to town.  I was having delusions and you cried, poor little thing, because you were hungry.  All my efforts all day was cutting firewood.  There was no food so I hid in the covers with you dear and was reading one night.  It was Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy.  I could only see by fireplace light.  You were asleep, and I was turning pages when there was a sudden breeze in the room, and there was that damn smoke again coming after me!

I pulled the covers over my head, yours, and Theodore Dreiser’s book.  I wanted to keep the smoke monster out, but it came inside the covers, but you dear grabbed me around the waist and pushed you face against the very place you emerged from at birth.  You stuck your little face on it, like it was something to glue to.  Your mouth covered it completely.  The smoke pushed and prodded me under the blanket so it could enter me.  The smoke acted like fingers that pinched me all over.  My breasts were bruised by those pinches that really hurt, and the smoke pushed me around on the bed, to dislodge you, my protection.  It gagged me as it entered my throat.

I was really screaming at the top of my lungs, when the shaft of smoke bore down inside my bottom hole.  Of course no one could be alarmed but you sweet Elmer, but you kept your mouth where it blocked entrance to my baby hole — thank someone or something for your quick thinking. 

I couldn’t get knocked up again by a penis, even a smoking one, that didn’t whip inside me.  So I humped with the smoke, yelling in fun.  You dear saved me that night from being fertalized by the smoke monster’s sperm.  I know I was weak then and it would have gotten in me from the git go.  Also I know that I could not have cared for another baby in my sorry starving shape.

I was very lonely in the woods Elmer.  You were a big help being in the high mountain place with me, but you had your rats, frogs and every kind of critter.  We could have eaten some of them, but you never would let me fry them, I was so hungry I could have chewed some of them as they squirmed..  You were born a vegetarian.  So I grubbed plants every day in the snow, when there was snow.  When the smoke came the 2nd time for my ass treatment, there was light snow.  I think the smoke thing left because I had not gone out to take a dump, or defecated the day before, or maybe a week before, in the back yard shit hole, and the back-end screwing  the smoke hammer did on me caused me to stink inside the bed covers.

The next day you knew nothing about me shitting the bed or the smoke monster.  After I cleaned up the mess of blood and shit we went outdoors looking for food and you looked for critters to capture.  We were about a mile from our shack when you said, ‘Mom we don’t have to come this far for food in the snow.’

The voice last night said, ‘Isie won’t need to go farther than the yard tree for food.  It is full of nuts fertalized by her shit hole.’

There was a big tree with low limbs, where we buried the father of the scientist.

We were walking back home, finding nothing, when you said, ‘Mom the voice last night also said, ‘There was a plague in Tire and your parents didn’t die, but the survivors were mostly women and some young thugs, for profit, chained and enslaved them.  The boys who did it were from Clove, but your mother was sold ot a shoemaker in Fester Township and he screws her every night.  Your father Isie is now branded and castrated and is the dog of a woman who travels on trains selling underware.  They won’t be brining more food.”

The way you said it Elmer was like you used someone else’s voice.  The words were not a little boy squeaky high sound.”

This was the story mom told me growing up.

The shit hole tree did indeed grow nuts, big fist sized nuts that were like a whole days meal.  The nuts grew all year and when we tried planting them other places around our house nothing grew.  Also the shit tree attracted bees and swarms of them came and left — often leaving the pollen on the floor of the hive, and great honey for a boy and his mom to eat.  We lived off the shit tree.  We studied, and then later grown up, went out into the world.

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Written by Ray Cates  — to contact the author send e-mails to rcates2@cox.net  or fax him at 1-352-629-1573   Please leave comments here at the story.

Another story, and links to other writing is at: http://unsightlyteeth.wordpress.com