Amalgamation

By Xlibris US

Deep in the uncharted jungles of Vietnam, there lurks a sinister parasite, alien to our species . . . until now. A chance encounter binds human and parasite at the mitochondrial DNA level, thus starting a chain of events that may bring real monsters into our midst. A dual being must learn to coexist with each half, but the world is a stressful place, and stress causes change. In most relationships, there is a dominant and submissive partner. Are we really the apex predator we believe ourselves to be? The question, then: will humanity be able to dominate an unwanted live-in partner or fall prey to one of the most adaptive, smallest organisms on Earth?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 26, 2014
• ISBN: 9781499059908

Book preview

Copyright © 2014 by Charlie Beers III.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2014914966

ISBN:     Hardcover     978-1-4990-5989-2

    Softcover     978-1-4990-5994-6

    eBook     978-1-4990-5990-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 08/23/2014

Xlibris LLC

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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Contents

I Jebediah

II Diamond Jim

III George

IV Jasmine

V Bonita

VI Jarvis

VII Leonard Larue

VIII George

IX Jasmine

X H-1

XI Bonita & Jarvis

XII George

XIII One

XIV George & One

XV Bo & Jarvis

XVI Jasmine, Jarvis, & Bo

XVII One & George

XVIII Bo, Jasmine, & Jarvis

XIX Leonard Larue

XX Jarvis, Bo, & Jasmine

XXI Leonard Larue

XXII Jasmine, Jarvis, & Bo

XXIII Bo & Jarvis

After Thoughts

Amalgamation: The process of combining or uniting multiple entities into one form; to mix or merge so as to make a combination, blend, unite…

Such is the audacity of man, that he hath learned to counterfeit Nature, yea, and is so bold as to challenge her in her work.

In these matters the only certainty is that nothing is certain.

–Pliny the Elder

(Gaius Plinius Secundus, 23-79 CE)

I

Jebediah

It all started with Mudfoot Bogey, or Jebediah X. Bogles, as his name was given upon his birth in a dirt floored cabin in the woodlands of rural, eastern South Carolina. There was no doctor for miles and no transportation to take the hugely pregnant woman, already dilated six centimeters. The acting midwife, her equally naïve younger sister from the next county over, surprised everyone by being prepared for ‘what naught’. She directed the soon to desert his new family husband to fetch two large pails of water and boil them. Esmeralda, Aunt Ezzie, as she was known to Jeb, had told the idiot her sister had been stupid enough to marry, to get the water more to get rid of him for a bit than to aid in the birthing process. She suspected that the baby was in breach which meant that the head was not in the birth canal. In this case, the butt cheek was where the head should be, and the poor woman’s contractions were strong and regular. Carol Burnett once said that for a man to come close to the pain of giving birth he would have to grab his bottom lip and pull it over his head.

The woman’s sister, Ezzie, reached down deep in her psyche and deep into her sister and felt the aforementioned problem; the right buttock was where the head should be. She plied her sister with the only available anesthetic extended from her bloody hand. In this case it was a bottle of cheap whiskey her asshole man would complain about her using for the birth of his child. Ezzie didn’t have the state of the art monitors found in hospitals, but she knew the newcomer was, or would soon be, in distress, and death was a likely outcome if the situation did not change drastically and soon.

Deep breaths and deep draughts on the now almost empty whiskey bottle were taken by both sisters as they gazed into each others’ eyes, seeing the sweat rolling down one another’s face and soaking into identical, soiled pink tank tops. Ezzie’s amber eyes reflected her fatigue and stress through the glassy look she gave her older sibling. The hair matted to the other’s brow from her exertions did not hide the haunted, pained message; Help me, please!

Ezzie told her sister, It’s gonna’ hurt real bad for a tad, then it’ll be jus’ fine. She tried for a soothing tone, but to her own ear came up short. She called the worthless sperm donor over to let him know his part. If his wife couldn’t stand the pain of having the baby turned and extracted he would have to knock her out. He balked at first. Whatever Esmeralda whispered in harsh, urgent tones must have changed his mind. He took his position at the head of what passed for their bed and grasped his wife’s hand. He dared not look back toward her nether region, but it beckoned like a siren. He glanced back as his wife’s body tensed and she clutched his hand tighter than he would have thought possible. It was a mistake. Ezzie was up to her left elbow inside her sister and there the father to be saw scads of blood and amniotic fluid spurting as she turned the neonate around. She used her other hand to wield a sharp knife with which she performed an episiotomy (a cutting of the labia to help prevent tearing of soft tissue) on both sides of her screaming sister’s vagina. Hubby fainted and went down like a wet noodle as he poured onto the dirt floor, imitating a marionette with suddenly cut support strings.

‘If this ain’t the definition of all Hell breaking loose, I don’t know what is!’ she thought fleetingly as she made the second cut. It was not as clean because of the awkward angle, her thrashing sister, and the fact that Mr. He-man was lying unconscious on the floor with dirt stuck to his sweating face. Determined to see the baby born alive and her sister survive, Ezzie stepped to the head of the bed and cold cocked her nearly incoherent sister in the jaw, sending her to the place her spineless husband occupied willingly: oblivion.

When her sister awoke moaning in what Ezzie knew had to be pain, she steeled herself for the storm to come. She had saved the baby, a healthy boy, and swaddled him with her own tank top and some rags she had found. They smelled of acrid sweat, oil and car grease, and earth, but they would have to do. She had stitched up her sister’s vagina as best she knew how, which considering the circumstances, any M.A.S.H surgeon on the front lines would have given approval. Ezzie’s knife and instinctual know-how also separated the umbilical cord from the newborn Jebediah X. Bogles and tied it off with her shoestring in a bow knot. It worked. The internal damage caused by the havoc was somehow minimal regarding life threatening internal bleeding and she miraculously escaped infection. She lived, but had her sister, Jebediah’s aunt, not been there, death would have been the outcome for both child and mother.

It was more of a shack than a cabin, the bleached and dry rotted wood walls hung with tar paper scraps scavenged at irregular intervals from who-knows-where. At least the paper covered most of the gaps and knotholes throughout the grand residence. Buckets of many sizes and materials were strewn around the one and only room to catch water when it rained. The roof was composed of so many layers of various artifacts it threatened to collapse, but the water found its way through to drip in a dozen places that seemed to shift with every storm. This served a dual purpose. It kept the water off the hard packed, dirt floor tamped down by years of dirty, bare feet and shoddy work boots while providing drinking and bathing water that did not have to be fetched from a Pee Dee River tributary a quarter mile away. Through treacherous swamp and bog, only those intimate with the environment could make the trip unscathed, usually.

The shack stood, or leaned really, in a small clearing surrounded by the tall, lush pines one sees throughout the Carolinas in beautiful abundance. Soaring high towards the coveted light, the mighty evergreens dwarfed the little cabin, making it look even dingier in the shifting shadows. The closest road was about a half mile away, and that was a rutted, dirt and gravel path only one car wide. Very few ever ventured more than a few feet into the swamp before turning around. If the sight of all the tangled vegetation interspersed with unmoving greenish water did not thwart a person, the sounds unnerved many a brave knight. The low, sonorous croak of the bullfrog, the incessant buzz and click of insects seen and unseen, the intimidating array of spiders and snakes, and the occasional bellow of male alligators competing for territory and mates are just a few of the alien cacophony one hears in and around a southern wetlands area. The area is what many would label inhospitable, but to Jebediah X. Bogles, it was home. Nobody who knew Mudfoot, or claimed to know his Christian name, knew what the X stood for. Neither did Mudfoot who Cared not a lick ’bout some damn letter.

Yes, one might say that Jebediah Mudfoot Bogey Bogles started life in a hard place. His father evidently could not stomach the bliss of a newborn son and wife, and disappeared within weeks of Jeb’s arrival. He’d only married her because she was pregnant and had inherited the cabin when her daddy passed. In dire straits, Jeb’s mom took a job in town as a waitress where the kindly proprietor allowed her to bring her son to work as long as he stayed in the back and caused no trouble. Mudfoot learned early to keep quiet around strangers (which included the bulk of Earth’s population) lest he receive a hand across the face or worse. In return for the owner’s largesse, Jeb’s mom worked long hours and provided sex in whatever form he wanted. The fat, unhygienic owner smelled of cooking grease and sour sweat, but it was better to have him panting and grunting (she always thought of swine in a sty at feeding time) over her than the alternative. She had a child to look after, after all.

And true to her southern belle roots, she was a lady in the living room and a slut in the bedroom. She would do anything Fatso wanted but it had to be discreet. She never once spent the night with him, but took Jeb in hand or on her back, returning to the cabin each night. She swore the owner to secrecy. If he told anyone she would cut him off, both sexually and something to do with his penis. He heeded her warning and told no one. Of course, everyone in town knew about it and gossiped among themselves, but in traditional southern fashion, never brought the subject up in front of the people in question. That would have been rude.

Hard place or not, Mudfoot loved it. It was all he knew, and his mother did love him in her own peculiar way, mixing a slashing slap for offenses which were few as he learned quickly, with a loving, caring and nurturing side seen on rare occasions. Most of her smiles were as fake and plastic as her bright, red fingernails. Jeb lived in the cabin and at the diner for the first several years of his life which ironically, kept him well fed and healthy. Interactions were few and generally limited to his mother and the owner. The owner treated Jeb well and did what he could to protect and help him when possible. Very few patrons of the diner even knew he existed months after his being placed in the back during the busy times for hours on end. Already, the X Man was learning how to blend in, when to move.

School was not the picnic his mother promised. Sure, she promised a lot of things, and most were never kept, but this one seemed to hold hope. He was poor and socially unprepared for the overwhelming mass of humanity and architecture that confronted him. The school housed 53 students ranging from first grade to high school senior, five teachers, and two administrators, a vice principal and principal. Jebediah had never really talked to other kids and was fearful of new adults due to negative past experience. By the standards of today’s mega schools this was microscopic in scope, but it caused six-year-old Jeb to turn inward.

Jebediah X. Bogles became Mudfoot Bogey on the first day of first grade. He hadn’t thought to bring shoes in his rush to quit the cabin, run the half mile to the rutty road, and another quarter mile to reach the two-lane where the bus would pick him up and spirit him to school. By the time he reached the bus stop, his new shirt was sweaty and stained. Once slicked back hair was hanging in strands and there was swamp mud on the cuffs of his pants. Worst of all, his shoes were missing, and the only thing he saw when he gazed ground-ward were two dirty, mud caked feet with accompanying toes. Studying his feet intently and wondering what to do, he almost didn’t hear the old rickety bus coming down the two-lane and jerking to a stop as the driver ground the gears.

He took in the dulled, yellow paint spattered with brown, caked on mud obscuring half of some number combination. He glanced up at the row of windows above head level running from the front to back of the vehicle. That is when the twinge of apprehension settled in the pit of his stomach. Looking back at him were eight faces. A glare from the rising sun obscured some of the detail in those glass eyes, but Jebediah was sure he could make out some scowls and he felt, more than saw, their derision. The door squeaked open on a rusty hinge mechanism right in front of him. The unexpected noise and movement made Jeb flinch and stagger backward.

A skinny to the point of emaciation woman leaned out from her driver’s seat and stared at Jeb for a second or two before taking a long, deep drag on her unfiltered Lucky Strike cigarette, and flicked the small remnant over his head.

Get the hell on the bus, boy, she cackled in a raspy voice. I got a schedule to keep.

Reluctantly, Jeb placed his left mud caked foot on the bottom step to board. By the time his right foot found the next step, he was greeted with a hand in his face. He was staring at an ashy, gray palm smelling of nicotine.

What’s that on your feet and where are your shoes? Was you raised in a barn? Ain’t chew ever been taught right? What’s the matter with you, boy? The flurry of croaked questions was too much for Jeb, and he stood there with his feet on two different steps and said nothing. A silence ensued. Finally, the quiet was broken by a small voice somewhere in the bus.

Lookit! He’s gots mud all over his feets! He’s a mudfoot!

A chorus of ‘mudfoot, mudfoot, mudfoot’ led by his six-year-old peers rang out in the distinctive nasal twang of the region as children joined the chant. The now flustered bus driver stood up in her faded flower print dress and struggled to get enough breath to yell the children down, threatening all manner of punishments if order was not restored IMMEDIATELY. Two of the older kids helped by meting out discipline as they saw fit. The melee ended and all was thankfully very quiet for the ride to school, but the name stuck, and everyone in the school, students, teachers, and administrators alike, knew who Mudfoot was before lunch.

Once, in third grade, a new teacher called role and used the nom de plume Jebediah. A silence followed, and the teacher believed the students were trying to play a joke on her. The truth was more innocent and possibly bizarre. Jebediah had not been called by his given name in over two years and didn’t recognize it at first. The point was driven home by a girl who had been in Jeb’s class since the beginning of first grade.

Ma’am, she said, Who is Jebediah?

Fortunately, or unfortunately, Mudfoot remembered his name after what the teacher thought was an unacceptable amount of time, and chastised him in front of the class. This was nothing new, so he took it in stride and tuned out the gibes of his classmates.

Being invisible, he’d gleaned, was the best way to avoid trouble. However, Jeb was also practical. He knew there was no way to avoid trouble every time, so