Breath in, breath out, report it, report it, panic afterwards, report it, panic later, breath in, report it.
Her left breast has been cut off and grafted over the hole left by the empty eye socket. It sags all over half her darkened, dead face. Her blue eye is perfectly preserved, and it, trembling between open and a squint, stares at me from her elevated position on her… web. I need to find the words to describe it, but it grows from her lower body, a web of arms and legs that are as hers as the ones she has born with.
“Do you like what you see, tiger?” she mocks, and laughs under her breath. “I hope you don’t mind me being a little… overweight!”
“Stop it with the cruel jokes!”
“I will do, but only if you buy me those cute undergarments you wanted me to wear on our wedding night. Of course, I’ll need a white eyepatch to match. With kittens drawn all over , that would be perfect.”
She laughs, and the whole web that engulfs her from below the abdomen trembles. The rings of arms and hands that hold bulges concealed reveal them. Beating, giant hearts for some and slick, bulging mounds of veins and meat for others. One of them rips open, and a newborn dragonling falls out, covered in slime. Oh my God, it’s worse than what I suspected: Abeline is a hatchery. An incubator. I thought they only climbed on her. Like cats on their towers. Like monkeys on their trees.
“Do you still think I’d make a very good mom one day? Look at how happy I keep the children.”
I cannot help but staring at her scarred midriff, at the greedy hands that scratch her and try to sink her into the web, reaching up to the ribs with their overgrown black nails.
“Hey, look at me in the eyes, you have it easier now!” she shakes her head, making the sagging, half-rotten blob of grease sway from side to side.
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“Stop! Don’t you see these terrible jokes are a torture for me?”
“Yes, a torture twenty years in the planning. Plenty more from where those came from.”
I took my hands to my ears and thought about ripping them off and closing my eyes, or, hell, even plucking my eyes out with these long nails of mine. But no, I must write, keep on doing so, and when I garner enough valor, kill Abeline. Decapitate her cleanly, painlessly.
“I am sorry I received you without wearing pants, my jeans have problem fitting since I was put on this regime.”
“Please, Abe, stop. It helps neither of us for you to behave in this petty way.”
“I will grant your wish.” Two of the randomly-sprouting legs of the web approach the face, their toes intertwine, and they cup Abeline’s face between the posterior end of the soles. “Once again, I am head over heels for you, dear.”
“Abeline!”
“Sometimes I think my hair is too dull and dry. Frail. It breaks easily. I find too many strands of it in the pillows, in the food, in my dog. But, thanks to modern bioterms for fooling idiots technology, the new Abeline for dry hair has done wonders for me! Never mind where the scalp may have been transplanted, the new Abeline’s nutritious mixture revitalizes the dead tissue and rehydrates the skin, making your hair grow stronger, shinier. Maybe it’s necromancy. Maybe it’s foul dark sorcery…”
“Don’t you dare! Please, stop. I hate your hatred.”
She opens her eye wide open like a psychopath, and even without lips, I know she is smiling. “Maybe it’s Abeline!” she claims, and bursts into laughter, making the whole web shake and multiple newborn dragons fall to the ground.
Kill Abeline, kill Abeline, kill Abeline. Before she incubates more dragons, before she cracks her next self-deprecating joke as a derision of my pain, kill Abeline.
The dragons began moving, running, looking for a place to hide. They are breaking into a mess born out of panic, beginning to clamber onto the base of the fleshy net and clumsily make their way upwards.
“What is going on now?” I ask, looking frantically from side to side, coming back swiftly to scribble this out.
“Daddy comes,” whispers one of the dragonlings.
“Daddy comes!” echoes another one, in a much livelier way.
“Don’t worry, dear Francisco, you are the only one I’d ever think about calling daddy,” Abeline says, and she flutters her eyelashes.
“Daddy comes!”
There is no more time to suffer this reunion. The hour has come. I will grab Jillsenbane, climb the second Abeline, the one who hates me, and deliver her from her pain. But first, the diary, I need to get a dry surface to place it over... There!