up:: 📗 Bookshelf
type:: #📥/📚/completed
status:: #📥/🟨
tags:: #on/books
topics:: Bizarro Fiction
Author:: Carlton Mellick III
Title:: Quicksand House
URL::
Reviewed Date:: 2024-06-26
Finished Year:: 2024
Quicksand House
Thoughts
Highlights
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“Now babies are born ugly,” says Nanny Warburough, picking the baby up into the air. “And while the cuteness factor used to attract adult humans to infants, these days the ugliness factor does the opposite. It causes adults to
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reject them. Parents don’t want to have anything to do with their young until they grow up.”
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“It’s not just your parents,” the nanny says. “It’s all human parents. That’s why children are raised in nurseries. A long time ago, parents tried to raise their children themselves, but because the parents were horrified by their children they could not bring themselves to love them. In fact, they loathed their children. With everyone growing up unloved by their parents, it had an incredibly negative effect on human civilization. People grew cold and heartless. Now that children are raised in nurseries, detached from their parents and human civilization, they are able to be raised in a caring environment.”
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At dinner, the children are served a mixture of bubblegum ice cream fish filets with sunny side up eggs for skin and cucumber toast.
- [N] #on/prompts
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The nanny hits herself on the thigh in three different places. Then she tears her own leg off. “It’s my job to protect the children,” she says. “And I know how to defend them.” Then she raises her severed leg over her head. Tick never knew the nanny had a fake leg. It is made of metal. The nanny stretches the leg out and twists the foot sideways like an axe-blade. “What the heck…” Tick says. The severed leg has been transformed into a weapon. Polly screams as she rushes the nanny, aiming her antlers at the woman’s face, as if trying to gouge out her eyes. Nanny Warburough swings the leg, clubbing Polly in the side of the head. Blood sprays from the girl’s scalp, her antlers twist to the side, and then she falls to the ground. “Get out of the nursery!” Nanny screams, hopping on one foot toward the fallen girl.
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Polly curls into a ball, shrieking like a demon, as the old woman beats her with the foot-club, hitting her in the stomach and ribs.
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“Intruder!” Nanny cries. “I’ll kill you!” She raises the leg-club above her head, aiming to crush the young woman’s skull. Polly holds out her hands. “Nanny…” Tears are in her eyes, melting her freshly applied makeup down her cheeks. The makeup she put on to look pretty for the parents who never actually came. “Don’t…” Tick jumps up behind her and grabs the leg-weapon by the ankle. “I just want to meet my mommy and daddy…” Polly cries, holding the broken rib sticking out of the side of her dress. “Just let me see my mommy and daddy.” Tick loses his grip on the fake leg. He can’t hold it back any longer. His fingers slide off and Nanny lowers the club into Polly’s face. Like a dull axe, the metal toes of the
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club split open her head. She screams in one quick burst, and then her body goes limp. When he sees his sister’s face break open, the blood splashing into the air, Tick’s voice becomes a high-pitched screech. “Stop it!” He jumps at Nanny’s remaining leg, knocking her off balance. As she collapses, the old woman says, “Ricky, what is—” but her voice is cut short as she hits the side of the large iron toy box. Her neck twists back. Her face breaks off. Then everything goes silent. The only sound left in the room is the violent thumping of Tick’s heart and the hideous baby squeaking in the playpen, begging to be fed.
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He bangs his flashlight three more times. The light comes back on for just a second and then turns off again. In that brief flash, he sees the woman’s face. Her skin is black and charred, as if made of soot. Her eyes are black balls of coal. Her lips like wrinkled licorice whips. She’s not like Polly. She’s not even human. The second she sees Tick in her cold dead eyes, the creature shrieks. She raises her claws and thrashes toward him. Tick throws his flashlight at her, but it misses and lands on the other end of the crawlspace. “Get away!” Tick screams. Just before she can grab him, Tick dives through the vent into Polly’s room. He lands on the collapsed bookcase on the floor. He looks back and sees claws reaching out for him through the vent, but she can’t get to him. The size of her antlers prevents her from getting through. He flips the light switch on and the woman disappears. There’s nothing there but an empty hole where the vent used to be. “Where’d she go?” Tick says. He takes a few steps closer, peers into the crawlspace. There’s nothing there. The woman just vanished.
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Tick tells Polly about what happened at school that day. He explains how the sky had no color, the class was upside down, and how Justin was trapped in the wall, speaking in a loop.
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Polly nods. “But sea turtles as a species survive because they lay so many eggs. The seagulls can’t possibly eat them all, so some are able to cross the beach and escape into the sea. I believe that’s why there are so many nurseries in this house. If hundreds of children are born in this place then odds are some will survive, even with so many creepers waiting in the shadows.” Tick takes a deep breath and shakes his head. “The sea turtles have it easier than us,” Tick says. “Why’s that?” “The beach we need to cross is falling apart around us. Everything is dying and crumbling. Nothing works. Our parents didn’t lay their eggs on a beach. They laid them in quicksand.” Tick closes his eyes. He’s so exhausted he can’t hold them open anymore. “I don’t think even a single sea turtle would survive if they had to cross quicksand.” “Yeah,” Polly says. “Especially if there was no sea for them to escape into.”
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In the dark, raspy breaths hit the backs of their necks. They are in the middle of a crowd of the creatures. The pungent smell of wet animal fills their nostrils. Shaggy hair brushes against jagged horns. Wiry tongues lap drool onto pointed teeth.
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“Why do they use birthing machines?” Tick asks the servant. “I thought mothers gave birth to their babies. Is it so they don’t have to go through the pregnancy themselves?” The servant gives Polly some strong painkillers. Then he cleans her wounds. He answers Tick’s questions as he works. “They have to use them,” says the servant. “It’s the only way humans can reproduce these days.” He replaces Polly’s bandages with sterile cloth. “A long time ago, when humans colonized this planet, they learned that the atmosphere was unsuitable for human life. It caused women to become barren. Humans could no longer reproduce. To save themselves from extinction, humans had to alter their DNA. They crossbred with the local natives.” He pointed at Polly’s antlers. “This resulted in many changes in human anatomy.” “Humans now reproduce using a birthing mother,” says the servant. “The natives didn’t have only two genders. They had three. All three are needed in order to reproduce. There is a mother, a father, and a birthing mother.”
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“So the birthing machine isn’t a machine?” Tick asks. “It’s a person?” “They are living beings, but they are not viewed as real people in this society. They have to be biologically engineered. Because they are created and not born they are seen as machines. Only the wealthiest citizens can afford them.” “The kind that are rich enough to afford a house this big?” Tick asks. The servant nods and gets them a second helping of food. “This house is what they call a Super Mansion,” says the servant. “There are dozens of them on this planet. Each one is like a nation in itself. There is one birthing mother per household, kept in the basement level of the mansion, which populates the house with children. These children are like the citizens of the nation. The owners of the house are like the rulers.” “They sound like insects,” Tick says. “Humans have become very much like insects,” says the servant. “Each Super Mansion is like a hive, populating a workforce to serve the parents.” “It sounds horrible.” The servant shakes his head. “It’s not as cold as it sounds. The people are happy. Some are even allowed to be artists, entertainers, scientists or philosophers. It’s a comfortable lifestyle. The people in the nation usually intermarry, but are not allowed to have children. Only the parents of the household are able to reproduce until they name successors to take their place.” “So people only live in these mansions? Nobody lives outside?” “Actually, there are many cities outside the mansions,” says the servant. “Not all children stay in the home after they are born. Many move out into the cities. It’s not as comfortable of a lifestyle but some people prefer the freedom from their parents’ rule.”
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The woman pulls herself out of the quicksand, exposing her insectoid lower abdomen. Her form is somewhere between human, animal, and insect. Mud-caked breasts dangle from her chest like useless blobs of pudding. Her belly swells out, rumbling and sloshing. A crusted hole of a belly button hangs in the center. Tubes run out of her lower abdomen, connecting to the ceiling in a dozen directions. “Are you the birthing mother?” Tick asks her. The creature smiles. “I am the Human Queen,” she says. “I am mother of all children in this hive. Each year, over a hundred of my eggs are sent above to the nests where you grow big and strong.” The blubbery giant rolls forward like a worm, shaking the ground around them.
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Tick looks around at all of the cages of light littering the ground of the basement. All of them were brought by children who had come down to the basement, looking for their mother. “It’s so sad,” the mother says. “But I must have food. I must survive, even if it means that I must eat my little darlings.” She peers down on them, licking her lips with a fat white tongue. “Now, come to Mommy. Save her from this frightful hunger.”
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Polly leaves her brother and goes toward the birthing mother. The creature lowers her mouth to the girl. “Come inside, my baby,” whispers the creature. “Let me taste your love.”