Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 89023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89023 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 445(@200wpm)___ 356(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
“He’s not doing well.”
I look up, gazing across the tight abs and perky tits of Little Baby. She’s sitting up a little, eyes open and nothing but black pits. “What?”
“Paul,” Little Baby’s mouth says, though this is not Little Baby’s sweet voice. “He’s not handling it well. He doesn’t love me best, Josep. That’s why he was never my favorite.”
This is not Little Baby. And the moment I think this, her body morphs beneath me. It becomes black sand. Shifting black sand. Which isn’t sand at all, but those particles that the Darkness is made of.
Still, it retains the shape of a woman with her legs open.
“That’s right,” Little Baby Darkness says. “It’s me you’ve been fucking, Josep.”
My mouth drops open. My head is spinning. I cannot think straight. “What?”
Little Baby Darkness laughs. Then she reaches forward and her black sandy hand pats me on the head. “It’s OK, love. I’m here now. I’m with you. We can be together. Me and you. Like it was always meant to be.”
My eyes shift left. My eyes shift right. “This isn’t real.”
Little Baby Darkness smiles her black sandy smile, showing me black sandy fangs. “Oh, it’s real, blood lover. It’s real.”
I wake up in the dirt gasping for breath. Which isn’t normally something I do, so for a moment I’m certain that I’m still hallucinating. But then, up above, I hear Paul talking to the scions. Something about… something. Who cares?
Little Baby Darkness was right. He’s not doing well. If I cared at all about Paul—I mean, if I cared about more than his blood and sex parts—I would claw my way up and we’d talk through it. But… I… just… really don’t care about Paul. Other than eating him and fucking him.
“She’s woken up, you know.”
I look down at my chest and find Little Baby Darkness. Her cheek is pressed against my skin and the long tip of her fingernail is tracing down the middle of my stomach. I watch, willing her to grab me between the legs, but she doesn’t.
And she doesn’t look like the Darkness now, either. She looks like Echo. Young, and sweet, and sexy pink-haired Echo.
“Why are you here?” I ask her.
She looks up at me with wide, innocent blue eyes. “Because you’re trying to kill me.”
“That’s not true.” Even if it was true, I wouldn’t admit it was true, but it’s just really not true. “That’s absolutely not what I’m trying to do. I just want your power, Little Baby Darkness. That’s all.”
She lifts her head up and begins crawling up my body, her knee easing in between my legs, her breasts flat on my chest. And then her, hovering above me. She places a hand on my cheek and smiles. “I’ve given you everything, haven’t I?”
“Of course. And I am thankful.”
“But you don’t love me, Josep. Not as much as I love you.”
I would like to point out here that this thing on top of me isn’t human. Well, I’m not human, either, but at least I’m made of flesh. This thing is not flesh. It’s technology. Something very advanced that I don’t understand, which kind of makes it magic—or evil, depending on your interpretation of the world. So everything about this moment is a trick.
“I’m tricking you,” she says.
I nod, matter-of-factly. “You are indeed. You’re a lie, Little Baby Darkness. And even though I am made of you, which makes me a lie as well, I need more than the lie. I need…”
Well, what I need is a partner. Someone to love.
Which is exactly what the Darkness appears to need in me. But it’s… different. It’s too ‘other.’
“Well,” I continue, “I just don’t see us together, Little Baby Darkness. I would like Real Little Baby.” I shrug here, feeling good about my authenticity. “You just don’t do it for me.”
I’m expecting outrage. Hell, if I’m being honest, I’m expecting it to kill me. I would like to play the game and win. I would love to be as invested as Paul. That man, my God, he’s driven. But I lost interest in life so long ago now that I can’t even muster up the illusion of interest.
Little Baby is a tiny prize. If I have to be here, I would like her to be here with me.
But I don’t actually have to be here.
Everything we’re doing is a distraction. It’s a game. I’m playing but I don’t care about the finish line. It’s just a way to prolong the inevitable.
The Darkness knows this. It knows I have a bottle of the Black blood in my bunker. It also knows that Little Baby is mine. Something all mine because I made her. So it took her form, not just to trick me, but to experience whatever it is I feel for this remnant of a girl.