Earthenwing
The house on Elton Road wasn�t on the bus route, but for a handful of children bicycling back and forth to grammer school it was a monolithic landmark, assuring them they had only one more ghost to cross and they would be home. The house itself they rarely saw; the property it stood on was bricked in, the only access an iron gate long since boarded up and too high for any but the most adventurous climber to attempt. If someone climbed the rocky cliffs of the island and looked in on the town they�d see inside the walls, but the only reward was a rusted tin roof, high and sloping, concealing something polished and bulbous and never quite clear. The rest of the property was a garden grown over into a brown and green haze.
When the house was built it stood on the edge of town, but urban sprawl had oozed around it, civilizing the jungle and demolishing the house beside it. Delivery men and postal workers were the only sign there was life inside. Every morning there came mail and groceries, and every third month or so a package went out with no name on the return address. On just as regular a cycle, children from the surrounding neighborhood were dared to climb the walls.
No one tried twice.
�My mom says there�s an �eccentric� in there.� Marcia said, pushing her bicycle as they drew closer to their homes. The house was an overgrown darkness fast approaching.
Loana and Tammi, both pushing identical purple bicycles with identical pink backpacks, frowned.
�What�s an eccentric?� Tammi asked.
Marcia snorted. �That�s what crazy people are when they get rich. When you�re rich, you can do anything you want, and your not crazy, you�re just eccentric.�
�That�s stupid.� She said. She and Marcia were both from Californian families, one with short blonde hair and the other with mousey curls. Loana was the only one who was native, and still her father was from Texas. It gave her dark hair and skin and a narrow, Florentine nose.
Marcia gave Tammi a condescending look as the black wall approached on their left. �Oh, and what do YOU think is in there? Ghosts?�
�No! Don�t you ever listen to the stories?� Tammi said. �There�s a big scary mad scientist guy in there. He kidnaps people and turns them into zombie mutants, my brother told me.�
Marcia snorted. �Zombie mutants?�
�Yeah!�
�Who do you know that�s been kidnapped!� she challenged. �I�ll tell you; no one!�
�My cat disappeared last month!� Tammi snapped back. �Maybe he got it!�
�Your cat got ran over and you know it.�
The tall grass growing against the base of the wall scraped against their legs as they passed it. It was a hot, dry day, even for the summer, and the insects were dancing with the heat.
Loana gave the wall a cockeyed squint. �My grandma says that guy is related.� She said faintly.
Marcia�s eyebrows went up. �Since when?!�
�Since ever. Every Christmas she writes a card with �Mr. Jookiba� on it and makes us sign it. She even made me come with to deliver it once.�
Tammi gave an awed look. �Did you see him? Is he scary?�
�She didn�t see him �cause she�s lying.� Marcia snapped.
�I am not!�
�Then what�s he look like!�
Loana stared at her bike tire. �I don�t know.� She said sulkily. �We just put the letter in the hole in wall and left. Grandma says I�m not to try and talk to him.�
�Why not, if he�s really a relative?�
�I dunno.� Loana shrugged unhappily. �Grandma doesn�t like to talk about him. She says her mother took her to see him when she was little and he was all messed up, like deformed. She said she screamed until her mom took her away.�
�Well God, Loana, your grandma is like a thousand years old.� Marcia said. �If she met him as a kid, he�s gotta be dead now. NOBODY lives that long.�
�Maybe he�s just really really old?� Tammi offered. Then, secretly. �Does he really have four eyes? My big brother said he used himself as a guinea pig for an experiment and it turned him into a monster.�
�Yeah, and your brother is a pothead.� Marcia retorted. Tammi winced.
�If there was a guy in town kidnapping people and turning them into mutant zombies then the police would have arrested him by now.� Loana logicked.
�Unless he fends them off WITH his mutant zombies.�
Marcia rolled her eyes. �There�s no such thing as mutant zombies! Look, my mom says there�s just a crazy old man in there that�s like a consultant or something for a research company. She says he�s really fat and really sick looking and that�s why he doesn�t leave the house.�
��how would she know?� Tammi asked.
Marcia grumbled. �She tried to go there with cookies when her women�s group was doing that bake sale.� She admitted.
Tammi was adamant. �I bet it was just a front. He probably puts on a mask and shows his face every once in a while to throw the town off. I bet he�s in there making some mutants right now!�
Abruptly, Marcia�s bike stopped moving. A smile spread out under her glasses.
�Uh oh.� Tammi said.
Marcia grabbed Loana by the backpack. �Lets go find out. If you�re really related to him, you can stop by for a nice family visit and introduce us all.�
�No!� Loana pulled herself loose. �Marcia, I�m not supposed to go in there! My mother would kill me, and anyway, we got homework!�
�Not so much you can�t spend ten minutes looking in on crazy Mr. Junkiba.�
�Jookiba.� She corrected.
�Whatever. He�s YOUR relative, why are you scared?�
�I�m not scared!� Loana snapped.
�Then climb the gate and introduce us, if you�re not a chicken!�
�No!�
Marcia put her hands on her ribs and clucked.
Loana pouted. �If I go will you let me go home?�
�Yup.�
When she wanted to, Marcia could manage the most smug, irritating look in the world, and Loana hated that. She wheeled her bicycle to the gate and put the kickstand down, though it fell against the wall anyway. Marcia followed suite, but Tammi stayed standing with her handlebars in hand, looking nervous. Loana was her best friend, but there aren�t many girls who would risk being turned into a mutant zombie, even for friendship.
Marcia hauled herself up onto the planks of the gate. �Come on!� she said.
Loana did. Slowly, they scaled the high gate, and caught hold of the peak of the hidden wrought iron to pull their heads up over the top.
The jungle that had been cut away from the rest of the neighborhood hadn�t died here. There were paths beat down from the gate to the house, but the rest of the yard had risen up in defiance; a tangle of snarling vines and dying bramble, rampant long-grass and flower trees squatting down towards the earth. The house itself, for what they could see of it, looked condemned at a casual glance. It looked like it had been built cheaply, with a ruined tin roof and crooked support poles, and a suspiciously elaborate wrap-around porch. The windows were not glass panes but recessed holes in the wall, showing something glittering and transparent, but dark inside. It looked like the plants had destroyed one of the side walls, and sunlight glinted back at them from the wound, but there was no way to see it from this angle.
�Hello?� Loana called.
Marcia slapped a hand over her mouth. �What are you, crazy?�
�You said you wanted me to introduce you!� Loana snapped, pushing Marcia away.
�Ugh, you idiot.� She grumbled. �Come on. We gotta get a closer look.�
Not entirely pleased with the idea, Loana straddled the gate and swung herself to the other side, only descending the rusty iron partway before dropping to the ground. There was a stone path somewhere under the mess, and it made her sneakers scrape as Marcia dragged her aside into the underbrush.
�Shh.� Marcia warned. Turning, she ducked beneath the low slung branches of a strangled tree and gestured Loana to follow, fragments of skeletonized leaves shaking loose into their hair. Something in the bushes glinted at them with a sudden intelligent light, but it was gone just as quickly.
The side of the collapsing house was nearing, hidden under a tangle of garden plants and condensed native jungle. It glistened in the light under dead foliage and splintered beams, filthy remnants of chrome and red paint showing through the fa�ade. The tin roof had dropped rivulets of rust down the ribs and left a ring of bloody red around the house.
Marcia struggled through the last snarl of vine and put her face to the wall. Loana saw a beetle tangled in the back of her hair but didn�t comment, only let Marcia fumble with stubborn vine and strips of rotten wood as she tried to clear away something of the ruin.
�I KNEW there was something in here.� She whispered excitedly, a metal structural beam making itself apparent as she ripped away leaves. It pushed up from the dirt like a stunted buttress, latching onto the metal beast behind the wood fa�ade and pushing the real wall in. Loana looked behind them warily. She had a feeling sitting on the back of her neck, like she was being stared at. Her skin prickled. She might not know all the reasons parents tell their children to stay away from certain men, but she knew enough to feel adrenaline swimming around in her gut, fluttering her pulse. If Mr. Jookiba was here, she didn�t want to meet him.
The jungle sent black glints at her; bright, lucid reflections from an eye. Loana grabbed Marcia by the sleeve.
�Marcia, there�s something out there!� she hissed worriedly. Marcia only glanced at her.
�Who cares? Are you seeing this? Christ, it�s like a UFO or something. Or like a secret military project. They built this crappy fake house around it to make it look normal!�
�Marcia, lets GO!�
The brush didn�t even rustle as a clawed arm slid out, grabbing the earth and pulling itself forward. Loana slapped both hands over her mouth in a brilliant effort not to shout as dirty blue fur slid its way out of the bushes, surrounding two glittering black eyes the shape of almonds and long, ragged ears. She jerked Marcia�s sleeve urgently and the other girl growled.
�What�s your problem?!� she snapped.
At the sound of her voice the animal�s head split open in a wide, toothy snarl, baring yellowed rims and chipped edges. Marcia froze and very slowly turned her head.
She was the one who screamed.
In a flash of teeth and dirt the animal leaped, landing square on Loana�s chest and pushing her back into the metal wall, pinning her at a strangling angle. Marcia ran, her sneakers slapping the paving stones.
Loana was letting go a shrill wail of panic as she tried to shove the thing away but it was too heavy. Ignoring her efforts and her cries, it pushed its face into hers and snuffed, investigating the smell of her hair and her panicked, terrified sweat. She fumbled a hand into its face to try and maul one of those wet black eyes but its claws clamped down on both her wrists and pushed them into the dirt beside her. She snapped her jaw shut over her screech and tried to breathe. It didn�t work.
The blue animal sat on her chest for a long moment, squinting at her straining face, before it dropped its jaw and made a choking noise, like a dog trying to speak.
�Llll�hhhhuehh�lll..lii-llllo�?�
Loana gave a sharp cry and turned her head to the side, away from those teeth. Over the blood in her ears she heard floorboards wailing under a massive weight as footsteps came out onto the porch.
�626! What are you doing?!� snapped a rough voice, drowning in a warped Russian accent. He sounded out of breath.
The blue animal grated its vocal chords and began to babble through its snarling. Somewhere in the garble her brain snatched the word ohana, but the rest was nonsense.
The unseen voice growled through a wheeze. �Get her out of here!�
The beast snarled. �Naga!�
The boards of the porch shrieked dangerously behind the bushes. Loana tried a desperate gamble.
�M-m-Mr. Jookiba?� she begged, her voice sounding wavery, terrified, and truly pathetic. �Mr. Jookiba, help!� All sound from the porch stopped for a moment, then the boards gave a great, collapsing shriek and she heard the crash of timbers falling through, a cloud of dust exploding through the foliage from the collapsed porch. The voice began to swear, loudly.
The beast that had pinned her abruptly disappeared towards the house. Loana struggled up to her feet and nearly fled, but a moment of familial guilt stopped her. Somebody could be really hurt. Even if all the stories about this place were true (which she was beginning to suspect was possible, of that blue thing was any indication) she couldn�t leave if Mr. Jookiba was hurt and needed the ambulance. Warily, Loana snuck past the bushes into the dust cloud, trying not to cough.
Cursing cheap earth materials, weather, termites, and just about everything that could possibly contribute to the porch�s collapse, some massive, filthy thing was fighting to his feet in the wreckage, the little monster pulling him up by his arm somehow. The man was a shock of obesity. Easily six hundred pounds, he was towering and wide in structure as well as stomach, masses of crippling fat exploding from his midsection and hanging in great quivering hammocks over the belt of his pants. He wasn�t wearing a shirt, just a scrap of a peeling leather vest that looked more like a gun holster than anything. Though he was covered in a layer of filth, the skin showing through she at first thought was a giant sunburn, too dark to be normal, but not even a sunburn could be that bad. He was the allover color of a drunkard�s nose, like every bloodvessel in his body had exploded below the surface. Loana squeaked and covered her mouth again.
�S-s-should I c-call the ambulance?� she asked quaveringly, hoping to God the answer was no so she could run home and pray Mr. Jookiba didn�t call her mother about this. His head swiveled on his shoulders to stare at her in surprise, his mouth dropped open to pant through his teeth, and it took Loana�s brain a long moment to register she was being stared at by four bloodshot eyes in his head, not two.
His tongue was the wrong color.
�Leave, Little Girl.� Jookiba wheezed.
Loana didn�t need to be told twice. She was over the gate and running, bicycle forgotten, before she even realized she had turned to go.
On the inside of the wall, Stitch took a few hesitant, hopeful steps to follow her, than sat down in the path with his ears slicked back to his shoulders. Jumba Jookiba picked his way out of the shattered wood, too soft to even pierce him, and mentally cursed the toll the unexpected was taking on his heart. He slumped over his long-disappeared knees and tried to catch his breath.
�She is being Little Girl�s girl, eh?� he asked lightly.
Stitch looked at his claws unhappily. Jumba gave a very humorless chuckle and turned to stare at the collapsed porch. He hadn�t trusted his considerable weight to any part of it for years, but at the human girl�s constant shrieking he�d forgotten for a moment. He was used to children climbing these walls, and he was equally used to 626 scaring them away in sudden, sharp burst of human cries that faded just as fast. He�d thought something must have gone wrong, for the screams to continue.
He�d been surprised the little girl knew his name�
Pushed into action by his panting, Stitch roused himself and circled Jumba critically, searching for damages from the collapse. There were scrapes, only small ones; nothing that looked dangerous. He could hear Jumba�s heart straining to handle the dissipating adrenaline, the beats louder, more forceful, and the state of it worried him a little.
Stitch pointed at the stairs and whuffed. Jumba obediently parked his backside on the reinforced steps, sweat gathering on the top of his head while his heart failed to slow. He was a few hundred pounds past �Pleasantly Plump� and his heart wasn�t going to let him forget it. Stitch set himself down by the doctor�s feet and watched the dust cloud settle.
�Was never liking that porch anyway.� Jumba said dully.
Which was a lie, of course, and Stitch knew it.
His heart stuttered over a particularly nasty patch and Jumba rubbed his chest dully. Stitch raised his ears in alarm. Jumba could see his little mind flashing danger warnings.
�You being sure that was one of Little Girl�s?� Jumba asked conversationally (distractingly).
Stitch nodded. His nose was sharp, and the smell of a lineage was unmistakable.
�Bah, too many children.� Jumba dismissed with a wave of his hand. �Half the island probably their children by now.�
�Hrrh..oh-haana.� Stitch grated.
Jumba laughed. �Family. Hardly. Family is being gone since Little Girl�s grandchildren started screaming when seeing us. Now we get card on holiday by sense of propriety.�
Grumbling, Stitch put his ear to the Jumba�s ample side, listening to blood move through the veins. The pulse was slowing a little. It would be some time before he thought it safe to make him get up and go back inside.
�Oh-hana.� Stitch repeated stubbornly. He lay down in a canine position to wait.
Jumba put his chin on his fist and sighed, his neck hurting a little from the blood in it. The dust had become a fine filter, and had turned the leaves of the garden a dirty grey. 626 sulked quietly at his feet. It had been hard on 626 to become outdated and unwanted in the human family, probably harder than it had been on Jumba, since he�d already lost his own, once. Stitch still checked every invader on their property for signs of Nani or Lilo in their ancestry, but after Lilo�s granddaughter had fallen into hysterics when introduced for the first time, the following generations had been carefully separated from Jumba and Stitch.
It had been lonely at first, but Jumba had made friends with aloneness when he was a little boy; reuniting with it after the short lives of the humans should have been easy. It was simply returning to his natural state, like going home, or so he�d have thought, but there was something different this time around: as a child, he hadn�t known what he was missing. Now he was all too aware.
In retrospect it probably would had been easier if he had stayed alone his whole life. If he hadn�t cared for anyone, it wouldn�t have hurt when they left again.
It would still be cowardly, though.
And unhappy.
For all his regrets, that little span of time spent with people to love was not one of them. Except, perhaps, late at night, when he was alone in the dark, his lungs struggling under his weight. Late at night the mess in his head came barreling to the forefront and crashed against the back of his eyes. It writhed there, vomiting in random order an old girlfriend, a human smile, and his mother�s calloused hands. It superimposed the image of the Little Girl playing in the garden over Lilo teaching her own children to dance, finally being washed away by the memory of Lilo, old and hairless, babbling to herself in a hospital bed while the cancer ate away her frontal lobes.
He remembered human funerals he�d declined to attend and weddings he�d been hard pressed to celebrate. He remembered David dying old and alone when a stroke drowned him in the bathtub. He remembered those stupid lace curtains he and Pleakley fought about. Pleakley�
�he remembered Pleakley. Invariably, on those sleepless nights, he remembered Pleakley.
He hated it.
Once the macho posturing and pain and walls had come down, it had been good with Pleakley, and that made it all the harder to lose. Jumba had really had to try this time; he�d never tried in relationships before. He�d always just acted the way he�d been raised to be; self centered, self reliant, and cruel as fate whenever the mood struck him. The same reasons some women gravitated to him were the same reasons they inevitably left, but Pleakley hadn�t fallen in love with his cruelty and his distance; Pleakley had fallen in love with something else, and for the first time in his life held him accountable for his actions. No one had ever cared enough to do that before.
It had been the first time in his life that the good in a relationship had outweighed the bad, and they sure as hell had their bad. There had been arguments and separations and fights, most of them Jumba�s own fault, and sometimes outright abuse; it had not been without reason that Jumba�s first wife walked out on him, after all. Jumba could be fiery and violent or helpless and negligent in turns. Pleakley had put up with his mercurial moods and answered them with his own. Somehow he�d
Jumba had been upstairs working when the communicator beeped, and a very ragged looking Pixley had asked to talk to her brother. Pleakley had been washing dishes downstairs at the time (He�d stubbornly refused Jumba�s offer to build a dishwasher in their kitchen) and had taken the call in rubber gloves with a kerchief on his head. Pixley said their mother had died of some sort of massive cerebral incident, Jumba couldn�t quite remember what, but that it had taken her out so quickly there hadn�t been any time to suffer. The estate was going to unpaid debts, Bertley was moving in with her, and there wasn�t time for a funeral, oh no, she was busy, so horribly busy. She�d sounded shakey.
Pleakley had finished the call with a straight face, and resumed washing the dishes. Jumba had picked up a clean towel and began drying them, waiting for something, for the news to clear all Pleakley�s circuits, perhaps. Something didn�t come until every one of the dishes was clean and in the drying rack, the sink was drained, the trap was emptied, and Pleakley stowed his rubber gloves beneath the sink. Then the Plorginarian started to cry.
Pleakley cried about a lot of things, of course, but this had been different; this had been something violent and inconsolable, something Jumba couldn�t make go away with a well chosen word and a hug. It was frightening.
And it only got worse.
By this time Lilo was in Jr. High, and Nani was pregnant with her first child (married, of course; she and David. The humans beginning their own family again was the reason Jumba and Pleakley had moved out in the first place.) It had taken the humans a few days of nobody coming to see them to get curious enough to come check. An uncomfortably large Nani had found Pleakley watching television in the dark, not paying the least bit of attention to what was on it. Jumba had been hiding on the back porch, so uncomfortable with Pleakley�s silent, dead-eyed misery that he couldn�t stand being in the room with it.
Nani shouted at him for his neglect, even hit him a few times when she found him. She knew terribly well what it meant for a phone call to take away your loved ones, and Pleakley NEEDED him now, what the hell was he doing ignoring him? Pleakley had dragged himself to the back porch and stared at them both blankly, leaning on the doorposts while he asked what the shouting was about. Nani left in a huff without another word.
The next day Jumba dragged Pleakley down to the beach, handed him a notebook and pencil, and had him write his mother a letter. He�d just sat there staring at the page for a long time, then slowly began to scrawl, a pencil not a tool well suited for Plorginarian script, but the idea got across. Pleakley filled up nearly a dozen pages and spent all too much of the afternoon crying from it. Jumba wrote his own note to Pleakley�s mother, then set them both down on the sand and built a small fire. He knew Pleakley was sneaking a look at what he�d written, but he�d meant him to. Pleakley chuckled a little at the rash comments he�d made.
They�d burned the letters and thrown the cinders out to sea. Then sat and watched night fall.
Pleakley hadn�t gotten better all at once, but it helped push away the frightened distance, and with someone to lean on he could cope. He didn�t come quite back to himself until Nani�s daughter was born. Jumba didn�t see the appeal of children at that age, when they were wrinkled and ugly and screaming, but Pleakley was more than happy to babysit when she let him. He took care of the child, and he built up the garden, and Jumba was content to watch him do it. It was a peaceful time. It was easy.
�.
Then it was over�.
He�d known something was wrong with Pleakley long before he admitted it. He�d known Plorginarians don�t live very long, not compared to his own species, but after all this time the information stuck somewhere to the side of his skull and refused to make contact with his brain. Besides, Pleakley should have had another twenty years, twenty at least. He was only what the humans would have called �mid life�.
��.Pleakley had started to lose weight. He�d never been exactly meaty to begin with, but after a week or two of nerves Pleakley went on with his daily routine as though blithely unaware of the fact, and maybe that fa�ade of normalcy had lulled Jumba�s brain into believing it really was alright. He�d started sleeping too long and letting the garden go to weed, and when he caught him vomiting blood behind the house he�d forced him to sit through an examination.
It hadn�t taken a genius to translate the computer readouts.
(Terminal
Terminal
Terminal
Terminal
Terminal�)
Pleakley�s body wasn�t perfectly suited to earth, there were chemical compounds it couldn�t break down as fast as humans do. It tried, but over years and years it began to back up in his system, poisoning him.
(terminal)
It was a compatibility automatically tested for when a species colonizes another planet, but Pleakley hadn�t been sent here to colonize, he�d only been sent on a mission. He had not been intended for long term exposure.
(terminal)
If it had been caught early it could have been filtered out before major tissue damage began. Before organ failure. Before living rot.
(terminal)
If Pleakley had--
(terminal)
If Pleakley had told him�
(terminal�)
if�
if�
if�
(terminal)
���.
����..
(He hadn�t known.)
(Pleakley hadn�t known.)
�������������..
His condition began to deteriorate rapidly after that. Pleakley became bedridden in only a week, hot with fever and blood purge as his body tried to get rid of the toxins. Jumba, unable to deal with anyone else�s pain but his own, told the rest of the family Pleakley wasn�t around because he was �sick�. He just had a cold, nothing to worry about, really, he�d be up and about again in no time. He wasn�t stupid enough to believe it himself. He didn�t think Stitch and David were, either, but no one called his bluff.
The girls picked flowers and brought them over to the house. They looked like Technicolor vultures sitting over his bed, their shapes lost in the darkened room, their ribbons tripping down over the shelf like claws. Pleakley looked so small in that massive bed alone. He thought Lilo understood, when she saw him, that this was not a simple cold, though Nani�s daughter was so beautifully oblivious. She climbed onto the mattress and laughingly tried to poke him awake with a viciousness even Jumba would be hard pressed to master. Nani retrieved her before Jumba had to.
After that everyone began to brace themselves, it seemed. In human movies Jumba had seen this was always the time everyone came together, had heartfelt talks with the dying, and smoothed everything over so neatly that when the real event occurred it was some sort of uplifting, magical moment. It never really happened that way. Jumba could feel the walls going up, self defense coming to the forefront now that danger had approached him. In Pleakley�s rare moments of lucidity there were no heartfelt confessions, no melodrama, just light conversation and long, painful pauses. He distanced himself artfully.
It didn�t hurt as much as giving in. After all, he was the one who had to survive, not Pleakley.
One morning, after a night of raging fever, thickening blood, and blindness that left him groping for help in an empty room, Pleakley simply got up and went to the kitchen to make breakfast. He looked like hell. He wasn�t cold, he wasn�t hungry, he said he wasn�t even in pain, and Jumba stood in the door utterly dumbfounded. Pleakley made hotcakes and made Jumba sit down to eat them, his regular fussing self.
Jumba knew the loud and oblivious voice of Hope was wrong. Pleakley wasn�t getting better. Pleakley COULDN�T get better. Pleakley�s insides consisted of black sludge rot and fragments of organs that had stubbornly not died yet. Logic screamed at him that Hope was wrong.
Hope�s presence hurt more than its absence.
He had no idea what was going on in Pleakley�s head, or if its processes were even sensible at this point, but Pleakley insisted on cleaning house and going out to weed the garden; Jumba had let everything fall to ruins. Nani�s daughter saw him out there tugging at vines and tackled him with a bright squeal. She thought he was alright. Nani and David were more cautious. They brought lunch over, and watched Pleakley with wary expressions while they ate, very much aware that if Pleakley was indeed recovering he should be ravenous, not politely refusing food.
David offered to stay the night but Pleakley turned him out. Pleakley seemed to have other plans. They involved cooking an elaborate dinner, eating it by firelight on the backporch, and dragging Jumba to the bedroom for an attempted seduction by a man who had no body left to seduce with.
Jumba was crying by the time they were finished. Pleakley lay on his chest and whispered. �It�s okay. It�s okay��
He fell asleep.
(terminal)
(terminal)
(terminal)
��
����.
The next morning, Pleakley was dead in his arms.
�.
�.
�.David came by on his lunch break to see how they were doing. Jumba was sitting on the front porch, mindlessly botching up the circuitry on his latest feat of �Evil Geniusing� and not caring. David hadn�t even needed to go inside to understand what had happened. He�d simply called his boss, told him there was a family emergency, and waited there on the porch with him until Nani got home, five hours later.
Someone must have called Pleakley�s family that night. Jumba didn�t. He was asleep on the couch, the Dick Van Dyke Show playing in mute black and white on the television screen, when Pixley and Bertley showed up on his doorstep. Pixley was angry. Jumba was angrier. Nani was the one who came and diffused it all by dragging them away for the night.
Events progressed with or without Jumba�s consent or participation. He didn�t remember the humans trying to convince Pixley Pleakley to let the funeral be held on Earth. He didn�t remember Lilo dragging out the photographs to prove their claim; he�d been there, and he�d been awake, but some very vital part of him was not paying attention.
(Pleakley was ______ )
(terminal)
Then somehow they were building the pyre.
The sun was sitting at a heavy angle, and it felt like it might be sunset. The sky was turning red. Jumba was standing by the jagged stones that formed the tidepools, a weightless thing wrapped in bed linens in his arms, and feeling like he hadn�t ever slept. The beach was blocked on all sides (a favor from Cobra Bubbles, he�d learn eventually) and a squared mound of green wood was rising on the sand.
�You can put him down now.� Pixley was insisting softly. Jumba did. The mound continued rising up around him.
David was there with a tiki torch. Nani held her daughter. Lilo stood by with a boy Jumba had never seen and Stitch was somewhere near his feet, waiting. The plorginarians fidgeted the green wood so it covered the shroud completely and Pixley started talking. He didn�t know what she said.
They burned him.
The ritual lasted the whole night, and the rest of it was wordless. They watched the flames, then they watched the embers, then they watched nothing. Nani�s daughter cried herself to sleep on her mother�s lap early, and Lilo stayed with her boy. Stitch, for some reason, stayed with Jumba. He�d felt the heat of his fur against his leg as night breezes came through and began to lift away fragments of Pleakley.
The sun came up.
An exhausted Pixley had put her hands in the ashes. �An end to tears.� She said solemnly, swiping the ash across Lilo�s cheeks. It was to be only happy times, now, only fond memories. When they looked back on Pleakley after this night not a tear was to be shed lest it dishonor the memory of ash on their faces.
Nani took it with tired, blackened eyes; it wasn�t a human ritual, but it was the only one they had. David allowed it solemnly, and their daughter fidgeted in her sleep as Pixley painted ash over the bridge of her reddened nose. Stitch was dusted under his eyes.
They didn�t try to smudge Jumba. Pixley was scared of him.
Besides, he hadn�t cried.
Jumba didn�t remember getting back to the house, or climbing onto the sofa and going to sleep, the television turned on behind closed blinds to give a light play across the ceiling. But he did know that he woke up there, stiff, cramped, and numb. He hurt but it was a drugged hurt, like a dentist�s drill after the anesthetic set in; it was more knowing he should be in pain than anything. He couldn�t go back to that room, with the bed stripped down for a death shroud. He couldn�t see Pleakley�s �disguises� lined up in the open closet.
Sometimes, he could barely breathe.
The humans brought him food, heavy foods like casseroles and turkey and bread, and he didn�t have to cook for some days. David brought six packs of beer now and then. But after the girls drifted away and Lilo forgot him entirely, Stitch came over every morning, and sat on the back of the sofa quietly while Jumba watched daytime soaps with the volume turned up. He hated daytime soaps.
David was the one who finally cracked the man. Jumba had settled in for a month of silent apathy before the human came over with two cases of cheap beer weighing his arms down. He sat with Jumba at the kitchen table and didn�t have to encourage him to drink; Jumba took care of that part all by himself, downing can after can while he complained sporadically about television and the state of the living room. Jumba�s bulk was massive and his liquor consumption was bigger, so David did not even try to match him, just sat there calmly as he waited for something to happen.
Before he was too drunk to stand, Jumba made a casual comment about having to learn to do the dishes, and something snapped under the liquor. He�d started crying, harsh, dangerous sobs of a man who doesn�t do this sort of thing. David just let him, and drank his beer.
Breaking let things get better. Eventually. The humans started making a point to include him in everything, some weird, misplaced familial guilt driving them from behind. It was a long time before he could even attempt to sleep on his bed again--
(his, singular)
--instead of on the sofa. It took his several tries to sleep the night.
Things drifted after that; he was unfocused, and time seemed to skip by at any pace. Nani had more children. Lilo moved out. Families grew and multiplied and eventually began to die off.
Nani went first.
David wouldn�t follow her for a long, long time.
The passing of generations shifted focus back to normal life. Aliens were once again imaginary, there were no such things as mutants, and Lilo�s daughter came back from Honolulu to present the family with her little girl. The child started screaming the moment it saw Jumba and his four eyes. That seemed to seal it; he was no longer a part of this family.
When Lilo died, Stitch found himself in much the same predicament. He was a little too strange, a little too abnormal, and if time does nothing else it filters out the extraordinary. He spent a few weeks living in Lilo�s granddaughter�s apartment, exiled to a cardboard box in the laundry room, before dragging himself to Jumba�s house with his ears on the ground and the antiquated Scrump in a pillowcase. Sometimes, Jumba still caught him holding it.
With Lilo�s death, the government stipend that funded Jumba�s existence disappeared. Cobra Bubbles was long dead and so was his work, and one month the checks simply stopped coming. Jumba started submitting scientific material to private companies, nothing advanced, just a step up from what the humans were doing on their own. He refused to meet with them but they wanted his work badly enough they hired him anyway, despite his behavior (the story of his life). They sent money, Jumba reciprocated every now and then with a gadget or computer program, and home delivery took over the rest of life�s essentials.
The city bled out. Lilo�s house was demolished to make way for a newer building, in better condition, and Jumba built a wall around his property to keep it out. The garden had long since gone feral. Stitch followed it. Jumba, feeling somehow more surreal than he ever had, spent his days in sedentary consumption, watching television, and writing rude letters to scientific journals.
His existence had become a neighborhood spook story.
The sole variation of his days had come once, several years ago, when his ex wife called him on the communicator. Her son had gone away to college and she didn�t know what to do with herself, so she might as well start catching up on old acquaintances. Jumba had stared blankly at the screen, like he was looking into another world, and he thought just maybe he was. His life was too long ago, especially his Kweltekwaanian life. That anything he knew back then should still be the same, when everything here was so different? The woman was apparently strongly affected by the sight of her exiled ex husband, a few hundred pounds and a few dozen heartbreaks worse for wear, bursting into tears. She came immediately.
The Jadwiga he�d known never cared about anyone, but when she came through the door and saw him sitting there, he could see that she pitied him immediately. It was humiliating. What was worse was that he needed her, that she was the only one for such a very long time with arms big enough to hold him, and he�d needed her to do it.
Jadwiga called the Federation Council and appealed to them to rescind their ruling. Let Jumba come back home to Kweltekwaan, she�d said. He�s learned his lesson. He won�t do it again. However, while enough time had passed for the Earth to forget about him, it wasn�t nearly enough time for the galaxy. Her requests were denied.
Jadwiga decided she could stay there, instead.
Jumba needed somebody, that much was obvious, and with her son gone was there a better project? Jumba kept her busy. There was a house that needed made livable, a garden that needed tamed, and a man that needed shaken out of his pit. She dove into it with so much enthusiasm, anyone could see it wouldn�t last. And it didn�t. Jadwiga was looking to play a quick game of house to distract herself, and Jumba was not capable of playing. It had been too long since he�d felt anything but dead.
It became obvious after a month or two that Jumba was not going to snap out of it because of a cooked breakfast every morning and a clean and tidy living room. Jadwiga lost interest. And, after a few half hearted attempts to make him angry, she left quietly and without a note.
Just like the first time.
The house went back to shambles. The garden went back to weed. Jumba went back to eating.
�So this is what it is being like to outlive yourself.� Jumba said dully, staring into the dust covered leaves.
On the steps of the collapsed porch, 626 was beginning to fall asleep. He pushed an eye open and regarded Jumba blankly.
�Never mind.� Jumba said.
626 sighed and sat up, stretching his spine until it popped. He put one wide ear against Jumba�s side and listened for a few moments.
th-thump�th-thump�th-thump�th-thump�
�Heart slow.� He announced, like a doctor making a diagnosis, though it was a bit of an overstatement. Jumba�s heart was never quite slow, anymore. Jumba patted him mindlessly on the head.
�I�m going back in.� he said, and started to stand; quite an effort, at his size. �Watch for little girls, no?�
�Ih.�
Stitch wiggled over to the middle of the steps, lay down, and listened. The door creaked shut behind him and he heard Jumba�s footsteps making their slow and laborious way to the sofa.
The television clicked on.
Sighing, Stitch grumbled to himself, closed his eyes, and slept.