by: Frederick Foote
When a writer’s creation comes to life unexpectedly, the naked truth behind its existence threatens to tear our world apart…
Anna Lee stares boldly at me. Her golden eyes appraise my bony frame from head to toe. Her contempt ignites her orbs and they glow fiercely over her hyena snout. Her cruel and eager canines slip indignantly into view as she grinds her crushing molars. She snorts a glob of snot in my direction and turns her back to me.
“Anna Lee, Anna Lee, sweet Anna Lee, turn back to me. Shine your better lights on me for I am your creator and salvation and there would never be thee except for me.”
Anna Lee rakes her razor-clawed hand on the concrete cell wall and leaves three deep parallel wounds.
“Anna Lee, Anna Lee, have we not fed you well enough with the living flesh you crave to kill and devour? Dogs, cats, fatten rats, goats, sheep, calves, and the bull alligator you tried to mate with before he became your meal?”
Anna hunches her armor-plated shoulders and hisses in growing anger at the mention of her mating failure. She screams in frustration and crashes ass first into the bars in front of me. The bars groan in protest as she thrusts her pulsating vagina in my direction. Her mating scent hangs like foul smoke in the air.
I dip the aluminum bat in the tub of lard. I jam it into her lusting orifice. She moans in satisfaction and frustration as I work the bat as hard and as fast as I’m able.
Suddenly she seizes the metal penis substitute with her muscular vagina and yanks it from my hand. Seconds later the bat explodes from her voracious maw between the bars only inches from my head, leaving a deep depression in the wooden paneling.
“Oh, shit! Anna, Anna—“
Anna Lee expresses her disappointment with a long angry hiss as she lashes her tentacle covered forked tongue from side to side.
Cassandra, my collaborator in the momentous creation of Anna Lee, steps down into the small room shaking her curly head. “Paul, you can’t please it or tame it or release it.”
She walks to me and aggressively grabs the crotch of my jeans and squeezes my engorged penis. “And look what it’s doing to you.”
I twist out of her grasp. “Not it. Anna Lee. Our creation. Our success. She made us richer than Midas. She made us. Cass, Anna Lee’s our miracle. She deserves so much better. “
Cass puts her hands on her hips as she appraises Anna Lee. Anna Lee, defiantly, mimics Cass and stares back. Cass points at Anna Lee and angrily addresses her, “You need to quit that shit.” Anna Lee points back and mouths Cass’s words and reflects Cass’s body language.
Cass turns back to me. “It’s not a miracle we’re very proud of now, is it?”
“Cass, we fucked up. We panicked, overreacted. It’s not too late— “
Cass laughs and shakes her head in disbelief. “Shit! Paul, it was too late when we wrote the first word about her. Fuck! It was too late when we got the first inkling of the idea of this, this monster.”
“No! No, Anna Lee has a, a mind, a keen intelligence and, and emotions. She feels. She hurts. She loves. It’s never too late when there are love and reason. Never.”
Anna Lee grunts and groans and nods her head seemingly in agreement with me, but, she follows that with a lecherous leer and her bark-like laughter.
Cass has her hand on her hip as she points at Anna and speaks to me. “Paul, are you fuckin’ blind? Look around us. The world’s full of loving, reasoning humans killing each other with abandon. That bitch in the cage is a killer too. We wrote her that way.”
“Okay, okay calm down. Listen. Anna Lee lives. We wrote her, and somehow she came to us. She trusted us. She didn’t attack us or threaten us—“
“Her very existence is a threat to us. How could we ever explain her existence? How long would we be able to protect her once we exposed her? How would we protect everyone from her? Who would be her friend if, we, her creators, couldn’t accept her?”
I move to Cass, put my hands on her shoulders. “She came into existance for a reason. She has a purpose in the world. Anna Lee’s a miracle. Our miracle.”
Cass looks tired and worn as she responds. “Nine months of this shit — God, I wish we had never written that story.”
“But we did.”
“Paul, our miracle is a super sexual predator, with intelligence and cunning and human emotions. We created a creature that we could never accept as human. And that’s all she wants — to be one of us.”
I pull Cass into my arms. “We need to try to help her. Cass, we need to try at least.”
Cass pushes out of my embrace. “You know what we have created? Another nigger. Another nigger to add to our collection of black niggers, sand niggers, greasers, wetbacks, slant-eyed, yellow peril niggers and redskin niggers. Just one more nigger!”
I shake my head in dismay. “Cass, everything’s not about race. This’s an entirely different matter.”
“If you say so. Let’s put her down. Let’s put Anna Lee out of her misery. I can’t cage her any longer. This imprisonment, and custodial burden’s overwhelming. Anna Lee deserve better than this. So do we.”
“No, no. If Anna Lee is just another nigger, another nigger problem, why would you choose to put her down? You’re black. Is that how you want to solve our nigger problems?”
Cass balls up her fists. Her face goes dark and her eyes narrow. “Fuck you! Fuck you, white boy. You don’t know shit! There’s no nigger problem. We’re the fuckin problem.”
“Cass—“
“We nigger creators are the problem. Always.”
“Cass, we never meant for Anna Lee to be real. We—“
“Fuck! What do you want to do, Paul? Do you want to open the cage? Do you want to see how long we last? It’ll fucking destroy us.” Cass turns to Anna Lee. “Anna Lee, my nigger, no our nigger, if we open the cage will you kill us?”
“Come on Cass; that’s not fair. How can she answer—“
But Anna Lee does answer. She nods her head yes with increasing enthusiasm. She’s slobbers and vents her mating stench. She stomps her feet and nods in time to the beat.
Cass turns to me. “The rifle’s upstairs, but I have the key here in my pocket. What do you want to do? How do we solve this nigger problem? Our nigger problem.”
I look into Anna Lee’s eager eyes. I see her need to tear us to shreds. I can’t look away. I almost understand it. We may deserve it. Cass places her hand on my shoulder breaking the spell. “I’ll get the rifle, Cass. I’ll get it.”
Cass looks so sad and radiant as she looks into my eyes. “You get it. You bring it to me.”
I’m just at the first step when I hear the key turn in the cell lock.
