An Infectious Game

By Pablo Zaragoza

When a neighbor man molests young Zoe, a pseudo hermaphrodite and ugly duckling, she gains the means to build her first laboratory to explore microbes, eventually eliminating the predator and realizing her passion for using her tiny "friends" to murder those that persecute, harm, and threaten her. On a trip to Paris, she meets a man connected to the global underworld, and they create a company that provides terrorists the tools to eliminate their enemies. As a urologist affiliated with a prestigious New York hospital, Zoe privately continues to use her micro-friends to exact justice.

 

Heartbroken by her infertility, Zoe finds her world unravel when her husband's affair produces a child. When Zoe murders her husband's lover, her one careless misstep launches an investigation that spans Key West, New York, Panama, and the Grand Caymans. To stop her from unleashing her deadly microbes, the NYPD, FBI, and other agencies locate her lab and attempt to ensure that New York residents do not become the next victims in this woman's deadly game.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pablo Zaragoza
• Release date: Mar 18, 2021
• ISBN: 9781393121541

Book preview

AN INFECTIOUS GAME

Pablo Omar Zaragoza

Susan Giffin, Co-Author

To my family—my children, father, mother, brother, uncles, and

cousins—whose stories inspire me to write

Pablo Omar Zaragoza

To my parents, my brother, sister, cousins, niece, and extended

family for their support and encouragement

Susan Giffin

Table of Contents

Title Page

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

CHAPTER FORTY

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

CHAPTER FIFTY

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

EPILOGUE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ALSO BY PABLO ZARAGOZA

COPYRIGHT

PROLOGUE

Video Recording

Found New Jersey Crime Scene

Case 309-2013

We need to go through the disc we found in the video equipment at the scene. Bob Hart gave him the disc, and Pardo placed it in the recorder. Bob plopped into a chair next to his boss. The boy who had cracked the case was long gone, back to Key West, so it was up to them to move the paper. He turned on the machine.

Dead air and then an image appeared on the gray television screen in the office of the two detectives, and the sound of her voice, the voice of a serial killer, terrorist, scientist, physician, and would-be mass murderer.

***

Now I’m left to this camera and audio to explain myself. You ask yourselves why. Because I could; it was easy, like child’s finger painting to me. I could manipulate genes and breathe force into my small delicate friends, and until now, no one knew. Until my life fell apart, you couldn’t even determine if I was a man or a woman, let alone the real nature of my genetics. Genetics, that’s what this is all about. Genetics versus environment: was it her biological makeup that created the monster or was it the environment that she had to live in that caused the brutality of her art? You say she calls it art. What she’s done is to murder innocent people with deadly viruses and bacteria. I tell you, there are no innocents in the world, no golden person that isn’t decayed on the inside. We concentrate too much on the external—how nicely you dress, how lovely your hair looks, how straight your teeth are—when worms are eating each layer of your soul until there is nothing left but a hollow shell. The self-important, the perverts, the unclean, the thieves, and the stupid have been my targets.

Yes, sometimes those who appeared innocent may have become infected, but appearances deceive, don’t they, detectives? You saw a beautiful woman that night; didn’t you? I noticed a little wood in your pants, didn’t I? What if you had known the true nature of me, would you have stiffened up? Would you have found me desirous? Would you have bedded me with the full force of your manhood? The answer to that question would be an earth-shattering and resounding no. Who would want to bed a freak of nature, a cruel joke of genetics, one of God’s little experiments gone wrong? One enzyme was all God had to give me, just one stupid enzyme, and my deformity would not have existed, and the monster never would have been awakened. He’d have lived a normal life.

That one enzyme so critical when defining the missing sex organs, and what I was left with, was neither man nor woman. I was ambiguous. The obstetrician who delivered me, the pediatrician who cared for me never noticed; they were too busy. They counted fingers and toes, wrapped me up, and placed me on my mother’s belly. My father passed out cigars, saying, It’s a girl, and that’s how I grew up.

My parents looked but didn’t see, couldn’t tell that my clitoris was larger than that of most little girls. It had foreskin and what looked like a vulva with parts resembling labia and a vagina. They bathed me, dressed me with pink ribbons and bows. But I was different, as left is from right, as darkness is from light. I was not what I appeared to be.

The funny thing is that I knew I was different from the very start of my life, that this frame somehow was wrong, and that the Almighty had made me the butt of some cosmic joke. I noticed when I urinated, it came from the tip of my clitoris and not from a urethra below the clitoris. I could pee-pee like Daddy or Mommy. I thought that made me ever so special.

In my innocence, I didn’t know that I was a freak of nature, not really a part of the race of men because all biological organisms have in common one thing: they can reproduce. The simple virus uses its host to assemble its offspring, bacteria and protozoans divide; reptiles and bird mates lay eggs, but I couldn’t. I always knew that I was outside nature; therefore, the laws of nature didn’t apply to me, or the laws of men. What are the laws of men but extensions of nature: survival of the fittest, control over the herd, dominance over the weak?

Time creeps by and little girls grow to young ladies. Breasts grow, and secondary characteristics develop. I was different as I turned fourteen. Facial hair began to grow instead of breasts, my voice became a deep baritone, and my small clitoris grew. At night, my dreams became erotic, and in the mornings, a whitish creamy substance was in my panties.

Girls talked about having a visit once a month. I learned in health class that when girls reach puberty, a bloody fluid should come from the vagina once a month. I waited for it to come, but the only thing I saw was that white-yellow thick ooze in my underwear. At this point, I was frightened. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. The little brown pediatrician said that it was nothing, and without examining my anatomy, he prescribed some anti-fungal cream.

If he had been a real doctor, like those on television, a compassionate and caring practitioner of a noble, almost priestly art, he would have asked me to get into an examination garment, placed me in stirrups, and looked. He would have seen that what they had thought was a clitoris was really a hypoplastic penis, that the labia were an undeveloped scrotum, and that my vagina had not developed fully. If he had palpated my abdomen, he would have known that no uterus or ovaries were present. But he didn’t lay a hand on me. He barely looked at me, so how could he explain the facial hair, the sideburns, mustache, and goatee? He told my father, who always took me to the doctor, that some women develop more testosterone that others, but this would go away with time, but it didn’t. It was only later that I learned what I was—pseudo hermaphrodite, a genetic mistake, something that looked human but couldn’t perform one of the most basic functions of life: reproduction.

Genetics can be responsible only for some of what I am. I wasn’t born to become this person that inflicted such pain on so many people just because of my reproductive disability. Human life is much more complicated than that. We interact with groups of people that mold the minds of the young. Parents, grandparents, uncles, and aunts are the first to take that fragile clay, which is the mind of the innocent, and begin the brutal task of scarring it. The scars that form, harden, and become how we solve the problems of life, why we like and dislike, are prejudices, are aspirations, what we believe are inner truths. We become an amalgam of genetics and environment, influencing the other; the results are who I became, what I did, and what comes next.

In 1938 my maternal grandfather was living in Spanish Morocco, a young man who spoke six languages: Spanish, English, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Russian. He wasn’t interested in politics; he was interested in experiences of the Casaba where his life as a pedophile began. He had grown tired of women and men but found pleasure in the flesh of young boys and girls. Now a Spanish gentleman in Morocco could successfully exercise discretion, and therefore no one knew his dark secret.

He came to the attention of one man who would change the face of Spain: Francisco Franco Bohemond. Grandfather had the skills that Generalissimo Franco needed to get his war machine ready to strike against the left-wing government that had been elected in Spain. Franco needed someone to negotiate for him, so money would pour into his war chest. He sent Grandfather to London with a group of Franco’s close if not trusted men. He worked with different exile groups to place money in British banks. He then set it up so that the British donations would find their way to Portugal and finally into the coffers of Franco and the Spanish Army of Africa.

Grandfather received a suggestion that a man in his position, now Franco’s personal diplomat, should be married. In the words of the Generalissimo, Marriage gives one a certain degree of respectability; however, it doesn’t mean that you’re dead. You’re just married.

Si, mi General (Yes, my General).

What was he to do? His preferences were elsewhere, but if he didn’t marry, his secret would be easily discovered.

There were several good families in Morocco, most of them in the spice business, and amongst them he searched. He wasn’t looking for an exceptional beauty, not a spoiled woman who would hound him for money. He wanted a simple wife, pleasant of character and most of all a devout Catholic. The general was practically kin of the church. Since they were leading the battle against the left-wing godless government, Grandfather needed someone who was almost a nun. He found her in la Senorita Marta de Nuestra Senora de Dolores Rivas. They could even claim royal lineage through a distant, distant cousin. This was perfect, and she was not cruel to the eyes, a soft-spoken elegant woman. Her tastes were simple. Since she had no brothers, she’d worked some with her father in the warehouse where they kept herbs, spices, and fine wines for export. She had been educated in Madrid and spoke French and Italian. This was perfect for a diplomat’s wife.

He still had to travel because by January 1939, he received orders to go to Italy to try to convince el Duce, Benito Mussolini, to help Franco defeat the communists. But it wasn’t until July with the pronunciamiento, the pronouncement, that Spanish Morocco was a protectorate of the Spanish Army of Morocco that Mussolini took Grandfather seriously. The news was that the Spanish Navy had remained loyal to the republic and had drawn a blockade in the Straits of Gibraltar that el Duce ordered the formation of the Corpo Truppe Volontarie, twelve thousand troops to stand with and help the Spanish Army of Africa. He supplied ammunition and guns, but Franco needed a way into the Iberian Peninsula, not troops, to defend the shoreline in case of invasion. Grandfather was on the move again, this time to Berlin.

Mein Herr, I understand your situation, said Wilhelm Canaris, the head of Abwehr. He had been in Spain during the First World War and had spent some time there before returning to Germany.

I hope that with your help, our two peoples will forge a friendship that will serve as long as the Reich. Grandfather had become good at this game, having spent so much time in Italy.

There is a meeting this afternoon, and I will present your situation and my recommendation that we assist you as much as we can. I cannot promise anything. The final decision is Herr Hitler’s.

With that, they excused Grandfather, and for the next twelve hours, he waited in his hotel room, knowing that his life depended on these Nazis. He felt that they were an emotionless people, stirred only when they heard the voice of the Führer.

It was around 10:00 p.m. when a car came for him. Admiral Canaris wanted to see him. He told Grandfather that the Führer wasn’t 100 percent behind this adventure. He didn’t want to dip his hand into European politics just yet, but he would send twenty-two German Junker planes that would enable the troops of the African Army to invade Spain without the need to engage the navy.

The little Austrian thinks himself a general, another Napoleon, but he is in command, and we will respect that. I’m sure that if you show some progress, he will be encouraged to do more, but for now, something is something.

Grandfather saw the light. His life had been spared for now. His time in Berlin was short. He’d made plans to marry Grandmother, and the wedding was only a month away.

He informed Franco that the Germans would be sending air support that would enable him to airlift troops to anywhere he wanted on the peninsula. He embraced Grandfather, telling him that without his help, the revolution would not have been possible.

My friend, you will go far. I know that you have picked a good Catholic woman to marry, and in a token of friendship, I give you this. He held out a small red velvet box. Grandfather opened it, and there was a four-carat diamond surrounded by small sapphires set in white gold. This became Grandmother’s wedding ring.

It was a beautiful, glorious wedding. The general’s staff was there, and the Italian and German legates attended. Three days later, the aerobridge fell to Seville, and the war began. The Junkers bombarded the navy; the old fleet was no match for the air assault. Two thousand of his best troops landed and made beachhead; the resistance was non-existent. The people, poor and hungry, had lost hope in the government long before Franco had made his move. He stayed home and waited for the evil to pass. In Rome, Mussolini ordered his twelve thousand volunteers to strike at the corrupt communist government, and so they marched, like the old Roman legions again into Gaul.

Franco sent the newlywed couple to Berlin. There were parties and balls to attend at night, but Grandmother was already pregnant when they arrived. Grandfather had to attend, but unlike the Spanish general’s staff, Hitler’s circle was a little less occupied with what the church would think or what was decent. So, after a long time away from his secret pleasures, he once more descended into the abyss of abusing children. The Germans are very precise people, documenting and photographing everything. They recorded Grandfather’s perversions in case the Reich should ever need to use them.

The Führer, amused by Grandfather, thought him a very intelligent monkey, for what were Spaniards if not Africans? They had tainted their blood with Africa, Arab, and Jew. When taking care of the English, perhaps they will enjoy a villa in Majorca, but for right now, they served his purpose to see if his Luftwaffe was what his minister of aviation Göring had said it was. During a party, Hitler, dressed in his white uniform, came over to Grandfather.

Herr Ambassador, I have good news for you. We have decided to send an additional twenty-four planes from our glorious Luftwaffe to assist in the liberation of Spain. This will give air superiority and crush the Loyalists. The Führer paused for a moment and looked at Grandfather in the eyes. My friend, if Germany had designs on Austria, through legal means, of course, would the Spanish government of our dear friend Franco object?

Grandfather looked at him straight. There was nothing behind them, except cold, horrible deathly cold. This was not a man; this was a machine, calculating, constructing, and deconstructing, constantly seeking power.

No, Mein Führer, the general believes that peoples of one language should live as one people. Grandfather chose his words well. The wrong words, even for one with diplomatic immunity, could still be death. This man didn’t care about law; he simply wanted to take Austria and, ‘will you side with us or the Russians and French?’

Grandfather returned to Seville to inform Franco of the new airplanes. Franco was elated. He’d have air superiority, and now, instead of pushing straight to Madrid, he would go first to the Alcazar of Toledo.

What was this man like, this Hitler? Franco wanted to know. He’d been getting reports of the vegetarian loudmouth for a while now but wanted to know Grandfather’s opinion of him.

For the first time in a long while, he told the truth. The man is mad, mad with power. He will take Austria, followed by Czechoslovakia, anywhere the people speak German. He wants to control. His ministers talk about the Jewish problem and how they would take care of it. There was one named Himmler, who smelled of chickens, who spoke of gas chambers and how many he could pack into one and kill. He had calculated the size of the chambers and how to eliminate the evidence afterward. They aim to dominate the world, and woe to the person who is not of pure blood, for their days would be numbered.

Franco looked at him with a smile. There’s enough Jew in me to know that we’ll fuck these Nazi bastards, and when we’re through with this war, we’ll send them home to suck on sausage. Let them try to cross the Pyrenees, and we’ll show them Africans, won’t we?

We did just that, and by 1944, they were the ones asking the Africans for help. They were fleeing from the Russians and the Americans and wanted new identities, so they could live in Argentina. They came to Grandfather, but he’d seen pictures of the death camps, the torn and mutilated walking skeletons liberated at Treblinka and Dachau, and he refused them. He told them that as far as he was concerned, they could all burn in hell like their beloved Führer.

Then came the ace up the sleeves of these Nazis: the pictures of Grandfather with little boys he was sodomizing. The blood left his cheeks, shivers went down his spine. If these got out, he was doomed, but he couldn’t let these murderers find refuge in another country. These men would try it again, they would try and build another Reich, and the next time, they would succeed. He filled his heart with courage and told them where to put their filthy pictures. But unfortunately, this was Franco’s Spain, the land of the puritanical ultra-Catholic Franco. The government couldn’t, wouldn’t tolerate such a degree of deviancy.

There was a knock on the door one night, and police came in and took him away in chains.

My grandmother desperately looked for him, but he was nowhere. He simply disappeared. She prayed the rosary for his return. One Hail Mary after the other, counted on the string of beads, and an Our Father to give it punch. She lit candles in every church in Madrid, made promises to God and to the pantheon of Catholic saints, and went to Mass twice a day, but the weeks passed and then the months.

Grandmother had come from a good family, but in disgrace, they wouldn’t help her. Grandmother was forced to work for the first time in her life in a tavern, serving drinks. She survived in a small apartment overlooking the tavern, and the months became a year.

Grandfather, without trial, was taken to a camp for political prisoners and persons of interest. They placed him in a cell without windows, no bed, and no sounds. He was to be re-educated into the light. The next day, two monks came into his room. They tore the shirt off his back, gave him a rosary, and asked him to pray on his knees for God’s forgiveness. As he said the first Our Father, he felt the sting of the whip; the scourging had begun. The whip tore at his skin, the blood streamed down his back, but with every prayer, the whip followed. After the last prayer, the monks threw ice water on his back and left bread and water for him to eat.

After a while, beatings from the secret police occurred. They insisted on dangling him from the rafters of the interrogation room, and with a reed, they would hit his testicles, legs, and feet. Occasionally, just to change it up, they’d put electrodes on his scrotum and hook him up to a car battery. This lasted until December.

The two monks came in one December day and gave Grandfather a fresh gray shirt and pants, a brown coat, and shoes. They left him a rosary and a stamp with the prayer of Saint Jude. They led him out of his cell to a door and to freedom. He knew that he wasn’t in Madrid but in Alicante in the middle of winter, and so he walked toward home. Then, in January, a man stood at my grandmother’s door, clothes in tatters, eyes sunken, several teeth missing. Grandfather had been turned into a ghost. His eyes filled with remorse, and he began to cry. He fell to his knees, and he who had stood on the shoulders of Atlas asked forgiveness.

They stayed there in that apartment for six weeks, trying to make ends meet, to no avail. Then one night, they took their few belongings and began to walk. They went south toward Portugal. They stopped in Aviles and visited the shrine of Saint Teresa. They smelled the roses, which filled her reading room, but no blooms were in sight. They helped to pick olives and other things for food and shelter.

They reached Portugal and arrived in Fatima. He crawled while doing the rosary as he approached the shrine of the Immaculate Conception. My grandmother wept.

Mother scoffed at this superstitious hogwash. She’d been denied her birthright by this sniveling creature. He could ask God to forgive him, but as far as she was concerned, he could die.

They moved to Lisbon, and he worked in an office, translating books. He knew Spanish, Portuguese, English, and German, so his services were always in demand. They spent two years in the Portuguese capital, and then they boarded a boat to America. My grandfather tried to make things work by tending a store, but he wasn’t a grocer.

Grandmother helped in the store. She was happy to have him around, but the business lost money, and they had to close it. Miami in the late 50s wasn’t a hospitable place for the poor. The bridges became places where they fished to be able to eat, and if the fish weren’t biting, oh, well, air sandwiches for all. Grandfather would go into the mangrove swamps and cull oyster beds. He’d shuck them, put them in a jar, and sell them to bars. He got a job as a truck driver for one of the chain stores, but happiness eluded him.

His daughter, whom he loved, rarely spoke to him. He’d had a disease and now was well. He tried to please her, but there was no way he could without being a diplomat, an important person. They sent her to the University of Miami where she graduated in business and began to work for Burdine’s as a buyer. She spoke four languages and was beautiful but cold, calculating, with no love of life. She began to drink, first sociably, then occasionally at lunch when she was in her mid-twenties. There in Miami, she met my father.

Grandfather opened a bookstore. I remember the smell of aftershave and mold. There were musty, ancient volumes in Spanish, Portuguese, and French. He spent his time trying to teach me the importance of language and the need to exercise the mind. Most of us thought he was happy. Grandmother would help him occasionally, but years of not taking care of her high blood pressure had taken its toll on her heart.

One August, I came to the store and found it filled with policemen, some laughing, others grinning. I stepped silently into the storage room in the back of the store. They’d found him, my Grandfather there; he’d hanged himself. He had tied the rope to the doorknob, and around him were photographs of children performing sexual acts. His penis was in his hand, and it appeared that this was the method he used to exorcise his demon.

Grandmother followed him soon after; the shame, the grief was too much for her heart, and we found her one morning in her room, cold, still, and lifeless. I remember that the sheets were drenched in urine, and the air smelled of feces, the final acts of the living.

My father’s people came from Ukrainian stock. His father, Lt. Col. Dieter Alexander Sylviste Zarakoff, Schutzmannschaft Battalion 202, S.S. Galician Division, towered over most men. His eyes were ice blue; his hair and beard were black. His pride came from knowing that he was a descendant of Bohdan Khmelnitsky, the founder of the first Cossack independent state. The Red Army had almost annihilated them. He lost everyone—brothers, mother, father—either to bullets or famine. He was convinced that these Germans would help to re-establish an independent Kuban Cossack State. He would fight for them until there was no more strength in him. His squad was tasked to round up Jews, gypsies, and the infirm, and march them into the woods, and there, sabers held high, he hacked the innocent to death. He was a religious fanatic, stating that it was the right of every Christian to slaughter the Jew, a rat that needed to be exterminated, and he was proud to do this service. He was the right hand of Almighty God, and his bloody saber, the instrument of God’s wrath on those that had murdered his son. The saber he had used was in our attic.

Friedrich Jacques, knowing about his ardent hatred of the Jews, tapped him to be trained at Treblinka. Here, the final solution would be tested as Operation Reinhard, the systematic liquidation of all Jews in Europe. He commanded troops during Babi Yar massacre, murdering six hundred innocent men, women, and children. He was proud of the contribution he had made in cleansing the world of this poison, this stain on humanity which had to be cleaned.

They gave him a field unit to travel between Lviv, Lutek, and Zyhtomyr, looking for Jews. He found pockets of these vermin hiding in the woods. In one of these camps, a half-naked Jewish girl stood in front of his black horse. The girl was frightened. She knew who he was, the Angel of Death. The angel dismounted, his manhood aroused by the young woman. He forced her to the ground and raped her. His men yelled and screamed as he finished, and then he threw her to them. The men ripped the few clothes that clung to her body. She screamed, trying desperately to get away, but she couldn’t. Her family tried to block them, but Grandfather used his saber to stop them.

The men laughed at her, grabbing her white breasts, throwing her again to the ground. Her bare bottom was touching the white snow. Her body, trying to resist but couldn’t, gave in to these animals. Two of his soldiers forced her legs apart while the third man plunged his penis into her, followed by another and then another. Her screams gave way to whimpering and then to silence. The snow around her became red. As the last man finished with her, she grabbed his revolver and shot herself.

Grandfather, in a rage, began to hack away at the innocent Jews that were in the camp. His clothes were drenched in blood. His men followed suit, murdering all who were there. Grandfather opened the chest of some of the people, still alive with their hearts pumping. He ripped their hearts out and bit into the beating flesh as they watched. Now he was the Lion of Judah, the Hand of God, cleansing the world of the inequity, the Jew.

Operation Barbarossa, Hitler’s grand plan to take Russia and realize the dream of Napoleon, died in the Russian winter. Grandfather was desperate. He knew that if the Red Army captured him, he’d be a dead man, and so he found a young, stout peasant girl, took her as his wife. She became my mamushka. He saved his beard, colored his hair red, and, behind the barn, he burned the uniform that had been his source of pride. He took his wife, and they walked east until their feet bled.

The borders were porous in the chaos of those days, and they crossed the mountains into India. They traveled south, working as day laborers until they reached the sea. There, they found a way to get as far away from Europe as they could. He found documents and passports, and they traveled to America. Grandmother, pregnant with father, came with him.

My father was born in Brooklyn. He was a quiet, sensitive child. He read and painted and turned away from the cruelty his father had done. The old man boasted about his exploits. He wanted to join the Ku Klux Klan, if given the chance, to exterminate the lesser races. My father would cringe every time the old man opened his mouth to say anything. Grandfather liked hurting others, especially his family. Grandmama was often black and blue from head to toe. My father had many broken bones, courtesy of his loving, drunken father.

Grandpapa worked at the docks in the city, first as a day laborer and then as a muscle for one of the local bosses. He was a gambler, womanizer, and as my father few older, he became more introverted and repulsed by this beast. I remember his laugh. Though rich and deep, it came from within him, but it was not from giving joy but by inflicting pain.

Before father graduated from high school, he’d been given a scholarship to the University of Miami. He enrolled in the School of International Affairs, and he was pleasant but shy. He met Mother at a campus party and they talked. That conversation led to their marriage a year later. They consummated their nuptials, but my arrival came later. My parents were self-absorbed. Their own pain had sterilized passion for them, so they lived quietly close to the ocean.

Dieter went to pro-Nazi rallies in New Jersey; in that group of people, he was quite a celebrity. He talked about the medals Herr Himmler had given to him. He loved telling how the Jews howled for mercy and pissed in their pants as he rode in front of them, saber held high. The blood, the decapitations, the women degrading themselves in front of their husbands and children so they could live; in the end, it made no difference. They were disgusting.

The FBI took an interest in him and tried to recruit him as their snitch in this sub-culture where they couldn’t go. My grandfather Dieter, always looking for extra money, took the job. What did he care that these weren’t true believers but Saturday night Führer wannabes?

He attended more rallies and began to ask one too many questions. The FBI got fat on his information, raiding several gun stockpiles of the Aryan Brotherhood. These bald racists weren’t as stupid as they looked. They had sense enough to know that someone was spilling their guts out to the FBI, but who? The brotherhood had been making ready for the day when the white man would stand up for himself; no one was going to stand in their way, especially not some rat. It took them awhile to piece it together. Most of the information about weapons Dieter had been exposed to, and only he could have given the Feds that information.

I think I was five years old. We had gone up north to see the snow, celebrate Christmas with them when it happened. The brotherhood had come to his door one night, and he stepped outside with them. My father and I looked down at him from his bedroom window. They beat Grandfather and shoved him into an unmarked car and drove away.

Papa, why are those men taking Grandfather? I asked. I was a child not knowing what I know now.

I don’t know, dear, but I’m sure your grandfather knows them, and they have things to talk over. I’m sure he’ll be back.

Father knew Grandfather wouldn’t return. Father didn’t call the police, his FBI handlers, no one. He, at that moment, became judge and jury. He let the brotherhood execute the sentence for all the crimes he’d committed. He turns his back from the window and walked away.

Yes, on the first day of Christmas, my grandfather gave to me one splendid decapitated corpse. Miami had no snow, no freshly baked cookies, no doting grandmother, my mamushka. The police had received calls, but it was weeks before someone discovered the half-burnt and decomposed torso, parts scattered in an empty field in New Jersey. A dog had found them and taken a piece of him to his master. The poor hysterical man couldn’t believe his beloved hound had a man’s hand in his mouth. He called the police. It made the newspapers. It was cold, wet, and gray at the funeral. I remember in the background many policemen taking pictures and making a fuss. Who were they looking for? A fitting end for one who loved to inflict cruelty on others. He would never raise his hand again to beat and torture the innocent.

As the camera records, a flood of images about my childhood stormed into my consciousness clearly and crisply, as if they had happened yesterday. Hopefully, these aren’t secondary effects of the microbes I’ve let loose in this laboratory for you detectives to get a first-hand experience of what I’ve been able to do. You should really appreciate my capabilities now, knowing the handicaps I’ve had to endure. Bizarre grandparents came to this country, creating environments for their children which stunted them as human beings. How could these people nurture a child, provide her a safe and loving environment? Tell me how.

I’d cry and my father would rush into the room. You’ll scald the baby, Annette! Please stop drinking, and don’t smoke around the child. She might get burned. She had no skills as a mother. The only feeling she had was self-pity, which she drowned in booze and smothered in the smoke of the ever-lit cigarette.

Food was either too hot or too cold, never at a reasonable humane temperature for a child. My father made sure I was changed, neat, and had some toys to play with in that house. Mother was a ghost, coming home from work and drinking away her pain. Life wasn’t the endless party with the rich and famous; no, not for her. She wanted to have the privilege she’d enjoyed in her native Spain, but her husband was a poor excuse of a man who couldn’t get posted to an exotic place like Paris, Moscow or Berlin. No, he was stationed in South Florida, processing refugees from Cuba.

Our old wooden house, built on three-fourths of an acre on a sandy lot, stood on four cement pillars to protect us from storm surge. We had to climb a series of marble stairs to get to the balcony of the second floor. The first floor served as a garage and kitchen; the second floor for living room and bedrooms. We felt the spray of the sea, heard the crashing waves at night; the ocean was only a block away. There was an old shed set deep in the back yard.

When I was a little older, I could run around outside. It was a lot of fun finding Mom’s empties, tripping over them and getting cut. The warm red blood would trickle from my hand to my fingers. I would let the drops go splat, splat on the white sand. It was strange. I didn’t cry. I just watched the crimson liquid leave my body.

My father would rush out and make the bleeding stop. They’d argue about how she just threw these bottles everywhere. You may have lost respect for yourself, but please for the safety of the child…

In her stupor, she’d tell him off. Go fuck yourself with that mouse dick of yours, you pathetic excuse…

She’d pass out and fall to the floor. He’d pick her up in his arms and take her to bed. He’d hover over her. I guess in his way of loving her. She was never tender toward him. I never saw any true signs of affection between them.

I never heard them say our child, darling child, our baby, any of those words that would endear a youngster to a parent. I heard only that the child had committed some offense or that I was a disease. I was a blight on the family, a mistake of nature, but in a child’s mind, I thought, ‘Why don’t they love me? I am theirs, the fruit of their love.’

It was much later when I realized that for them, it wasn’t about love but the comfort of having a warm body close by. They didn’t want to come home to an empty house, an empty life. At least, there was someone in the shadow that would occasionally acknowledge their existence. Someone to talk to, to hear the noise of another human being is all they wanted to have.

Now, I understand the night of passion when the moon is right. A sperm meets an egg, and fertilization begins. No mystery, no love, just simple biology. These two beings didn’t have the emotional hardware to love. They’d been tainted by their own personal misery. Love was foreign to them. She married with the hope that he would restore her life of privilege. He married her out of a need to share his loneliness.

I tended not to play with others. I felt awkward in my skin.

Others looked at me in school and taunted me. Look, look! It’s fatty fat. She’s so big, and she’s got hair on her back. That was my greeting every morning on the school bus. So, I tended to roam the back yard for treasures.

I collected bugs, at first, placing them on pins, finding their scientific names and placing them in small black boxes like displays in a museum. I collected flowers, leaves, nuts, and seeds. I’d look up their names and place them in books. By the time I left for college, I had over sixty thousand species of arthropods and plants.

When I was around nine, I started to walk to the beach. I’d search the tide pools for crabs, shells, and animals. I explored the mangrove swamps, learned to snorkel. I built what I called a slurp gun, a piece of clear tubing with a plunger-like syringe, which I’d take with me to the coral reefs. There, I’d use it to get tropical fish. I kept a saltwater tank in my room and placed the new finds in it. I would type on cards the species I had captured and placed them on the tank. I kept detailed notes on the lives of these creatures, noted their changes in habits, their reactions to too much heat or cold or to not enough air. My collecting made me feel that I was connected to the world. I wasn’t an anomaly but a living, breathing organism; the girl in the mirror would undergo a magnificent metamorphosis.

CHAPTER ONE

I was twelve when the changes started. Puberty is a confusing time even for normal kids, let alone the biologically bizarre. At first, it was a hair on my chin and a whisker on my upper lip. By the time school let out for summer break, I had a handsome fuzzy little beard. I guess my parents thought I could join the circus with the other freaks. I had only one friend, but I had plenty of tormentors—the little girls my own age in my neighborhood. They would yell their taunts as if words didn’t hurt a small, sensitive soul more than the whip or the knife.

They would hurl derisions at me, these beautiful blonde princesses, their daddies’ pride and joy, Watch out! It’s MONKEY GIRL swinging from tree to tree. Look out! It’s Monkey Girl. She’ll throw shit at you. Oh, my God. It’s hideous. It’s MG.

These were their fathers’ little angels. They went to church, drank the communal wine, confessed their sins, and ran to the back of the church to smoke Camels and touch themselves as they thought about boys. They had little boyfriends that home with them and met their parents. They enjoyed the company of friends, praises from the mothers, who showed them how to dress, put on lipstick, and use eyeliner.

My mother barely knew I existed as a human being. She would come home from work, grab her scotch, and fall into a gray armchair, never asking how my day had gone. Once she emptied that drink, she’d get up and pour another glass. These were my days of fear and loneliness, but life was about to change because I had found a friend.

Uncle Joey was a creature of short stature, four feet six inches, whose belly hung to his knees. He would stand in his yard in the hot Miami sun for hours, watching the children play. Since no one wanted to play with a circus act, like me, Uncle Joey slowly befriended me, the ugly girl. The fat man was very nice to me. He gave me ice cream, a charm bracelet, and a friendship ring.

When fall came and school started, he would wait for me at the bus stop. No one had ever waited for me. I had the key to the house, and since the first grade, I’d let myself in and wait for my parents to come home.

By November, he asked me over to his house. For a large man, the house was exceptionally tidy, and it had that air freshener smell. At first, we’d watch TV and eat ice cream, and it was nice. I had a friend.

Uncle Joey started to show his true nature by December. I’d come over, and he’d want to bathe me. This was odd because I’d been bathing myself for a very long time now. I thought why not. What harm could this overweight, bald man do to me? He wanted a little show for the kindness that he’d given me. Let’s give him a show. He had been the one who dried my tears after the nightmare of school was done for the day. With him, I wasn’t Monkey Girl, a refugee from the Planet of the Apes. He treated me like a human being. He comforted me in my pain, gave me a place where I was special, not a freak of nature to be ridiculed. I wasn’t sure what was happening, but when I got into the tub, he turned on the water.

Not too hot, Ducky. It could burn your skin. It doesn’t burn, does it? he’d ask in a kind, gentle voice.

He would lather me up, making sure my privates were spotless. They must be germ free, he kept saying over and over as he washed me. Uncle Joey wasn’t alarmed by my peculiar genitals; he barely noticed them. At one of these sessions, I saw him touching himself. At first, I thought he was scratching his belly, but the grimaces on his face said something else. He then spotted his pants shuddered as if a chill had come over him. I thought in that child brain of mine that he’d had a seizure. I asked him if he needed a doctor.

The ecstasy left his face. No, Ducky. No need for a doctor.

By February, Uncle Joey was saying that he was dirty too and needed to take a bath with Ducky, if Ducky didn’t mind. I was taken aback to see the layers upon layers of fat rolling from his belly. There were no visible genitalia to speak of, just this flap of fat and skin. The drops of water rolled down his belly, but how could he clean his privates? His arms were too short to reach even the crack of his ass. Then he asked if I wouldn’t mind scrubbing his special place like he had done for me. Scrub, scrub to get all the nasty germs out, he said.

With all my strength, I lifted the flap to a small reddish knob covered in papules and pustules that was his penis. The pubic area had no hair, just red scaly skin. By that time in school, I’d learned enough to know that this wasn’t the normal appearance of an adult man. Something was wrong with him. Maybe he had an affliction like mine, and my mind began to work, wondering what his problem might be.

I scrubbed the little knob, and a slimy green fluid came out of it. The papules and pustules burst and expressed a whitish slime. For some strange reason, this did not repulse me at all. The experience made me curious as to why the skin was red and scaly. What caused this to be different in color and texture from my own skin? What causes this to happen?

I went to the local library to explore. A copy of Skin Disease by Thomas P. Habif was on the shelf. I picked it up, knowing that I would find the answer to my question. I explored its many illustrated pages.

Were these acute generalized exanthematous pustules? No, this wasn’t generalized; it was more localized around his privates. Did he have an infestation of sarcoptes scabies that too has pustules and is in the penis and inguinal area? Dermatomycosis mediated by Candida albicans, was this it? The lesions described were exactly like the ones Uncle Joey had, I thought