Gumiho: Our Life Has Just Begun (1)
Chapter 1
"Yes. Yes, I'll call him."
I hung up, wrestling my teats from the kits that suckled at my waist, hiking up my skirt and hiding them beneath my blouse. The creatures nudged at my calves, tugged at my socks as I stood up. So foreign, and yet my own.
My name is Felicity Jones--and I'm a dead girl. This is my story.
"Marcus! It's him. He wants you to call him back on your line. Says it's urgent. Didn't tell me what, but apparently, the others need to hear it too."
"Oh yeah, Lis? More paper routes, I'm guessing? Well, I'll give him a call," he sighed, knowing that this inevitably meant bad news for all of us.
The thirty-something photographer got up from the sofa, turned off the television program, stepped into a corner, and fished his cell out of a khaki pocket. It was our way of delivering news--he was our mouth. It was how he made his keep, and our special deal, in return for his continued stay among us, in our homes. There were few like him, but we needed his kind--people who tolerated us were a rare find.
"Get on now, shoo, shoo. You've had your fill." I said, rubbing my tender belly, and waving the young ones off with one hand. They licked at it, and twirled, wagging their tails and panting excitedly. "No more." I said sternly, trying to put on my best serious face, bending so they could see it. They continued, but after a few moments of being ignored, they relented, and scampered away to cause trouble and make messes.
Not, that I was ungrateful, but you understand what it's like to keep a stranger in your home. Marcus isn't mine. Isn't ours. Maybe one time, he could have been a co-worker, a confidant, or maybe eventually a boyfriend. But like I said--I've been dead for weeks now. Maybe months, or years. My memories aren't as clear since the change.
I made my rounds about the house, unkempt as ever--it would never be a homeowner's dream. Most of the carpets we'd had torn out, and the subfloor covered in spots to minimize splinters--in places where we hadn't had tiling installed yet. The place smelled of fox scat, and much as I loathe to admit it, I'd long come to accept this odor. I did my best to clean up the odd mess; pick up after torn apholstery from moments I'd been too distracted from my young--answering an odd call from dad, or barking his requests to Marcus while the babies began their teething. It had been a busy week. I was still gearing up for the prospect of weening them from my milk. I'd not looked forward to the thought of having to go back to being their mom in a full-time sense.
When I say I'm dead, that is to say, my human life is over. I had an identity once, and people. People I guess you could say I knew. I was a person with goals, I guess--though they seemed to change everytime my ship hit an emotional storm--but I never really brought any of them to realization, before it happened.
I don't quite remember how it happened, to be honest--most like me don't. They go to sleep one evening, melancholy humans with unfulfilled dreams, frustrations, and inhibitions all their own--and then when they wake up from the strange nightmares, the cloying visions--they're in a different place. Our place.
Their dreams die. They die. In place of what they were, is one of us.
I don't know what we are. I just know that we have to keep existing--try as hard as we can. I feel it; the need to live. It's confusing. Items and objects from my old life keep appearing, and they haunt me with a sense of familiarity that I can never go back to.
I've lost my virginity, as a human. I am dead.