2003-05-28 - 3:05 p.m.

I lay down in Gregory's front seat, My feet sticking out his passenger side window, my head propped up against his driver's side door. Driving across country can be relaxing when your best friend is a Pontiac. I wasn't even sure where we were anymore, I think it may have been Canada once. The land outside was rolling and mountanous, covered with trees. About half the trees were burnt up, they were just blackened bristles sticking up or falling down against each other. The burnt trees were in these great swaths in between sections of still green forest, as though someone had taken a great fiery paintbrush to the land and turned it into a sprawling black and green marble cake. As the sun began to set behind my head, the sky turned blazing fuschia, and the burnt forest reflected it back a deep purple.

Gregory slowed down, I'd become attuned to his moods in the months we'd been travelling together, and I knew something was on his mind. I glanced up over the dashboard and I saw something peculiar. A great black tower rose up out of a wooded hillside up ahead. It was a bizzare, ricketty structure, maybe thirty stories high. It was all blaconies and spires and staircases, sticking out here and there at awkward angles. Something about it disturbed Gregory deeply. I let out an anxious breath. "You wanna go check it out?" I said. His engine revved in response. "Allright Greg, lets go see."

As we got closer the structure's details got stranger and stranger. It didn't look like it should be standing at all, About three fourths of the way up it seemed to bulge out to one side, where shingled rooms hung out precariously top-heavy. Even weirder, it all seemed to be lit with a dull red glow from underneath. I stroked my face with my hand nervously as Gregory turned off the main road onto a little dirt path that led up to the great black monstrosity. We came to a little clearing outside an old iron fence with a gate. The thing loomed up overhead like some misshapen nightmare. Even if the gate were open, it wouldn't be wide enough for Gregory to fit in. "I guess it's up to me from here, eh?" Gregory simply turned off his engine and left his headlights shining on the black iron gate. I snorted and got out of the car. Greg did what he did for a reason, though I had to guess what those reasons were, and as often as not, I never really figured it out. He'd gotten me out of some nasty scrapes though, so I owed it to him to go along on some of his crazy adventures.

As I walked up a little path towards the perverted structure, the first thing I noticed was the sound of children's voices. I got nearer and saw there were several picnic tables situated in front of the base of the building, which was surrounded by a deep rocky moat. How deep I couldn't say, but it looked like it was the source of that red glow. There were a bunch of kids around the tables, some were sitting and eating, some were chasing each other around and laughing. I swallowed a nervous lump I my throat and took a step forward, only to trip over something hard on the ground, I fell forward and landed on my hands. I looked back to see what the thing was. It looked like a little gravestone. Looking around at the ground around me I saw more, they dotted the little clearing seemingly at random. None were more than a foot tall.

"Hello", said a young voice. I looked up and saw a little boy looking at me.

"Oh, hi there kid."

"My name's Frankie, what's yours?"

"Rupert."

He giggled. "Rupert? Thats a silly name. None of us have silly names. We're all called Frankie or Danny or Lucy or Jenny or stuff like that."

I nodded. He giggled again and skipped off chanting "Rupert, rupert, what a silly name!"

I took a closer look at the tiny headstone I'd tripped over. Scratched on it in crude letters was one word: "BENNEY". That nervous lump crept its way back up my throat.

Overhead, a couple of stories up, a large black shape appeared on a balcony which tilted a bit to one side. It was a massive woman in a black frilled dress. At least, it looked vaguely female, but when it spoke the voice was deep and masculine.

"Sweethearts, are you enjoying yourselves?", it bellowed. The children all fell silent. Those who were seated stood up, and they all stared up at the balcony with their arms at their sides. "Oh my sweeet darlings, I have some good news and some bad. I've been hard at work in the laboratory, And I've made a new sister for you. Isn't that exciting!", exclaimed the flabby head that poked out of the top of the frilly black bulk. The children remained dead silent, staring up, there wasn't a smile among them. The creature up above, however, had a huge grin splitting its revolting face. "I'd like you all to meet Ginny!"

A door opened at the base of the tower, and a little girl walked carefully out across a flimsy wooden board which spanned the moat. "Hi, Ginny.", said the children in somber unison.

"And now the bad news." The androgynous behemoth clasped its pudgy little hands together in front of its body. The wicked smile never left its face. "Phoebe has eaten a poisoned hot-dog.", it stated flatly. And one of the little girls turned pale and dropped limply to the ground. "I trust you'll give her a proper burial." And with this final statement, the thing turned and disappeared into the tower. The children, their trance broken, scrambled to activity. Some picked up shovels that were lying around and began digging a hole. Some picked up a little headstone from a heaping pile of the gruesome things and began scraping the letters "FEEBY" into it with a rusty chisel. Others folded up a cardboard box and began filling it with a bed of pink flowers picked from a little garden nearby. My stomach turned. My only comfort was that I was pretty sure the nasty thing hadn't seen me lying there on the ground. I thought about turning back, but some part of me knew I couldn't ever sleep again having left this behind. I got up and ran for the little board-bridge.

"Where ya goin'?", said Frankie.

"In there."

"Momma doesn't like people in her house."

"Momma huh? I suppose she wouldn't."

I didn't dare look down as I balanced on the board. It creaked and I felt like my weight would snap the thing in half. A hot gust blew up at me from below. I took a deep breath and ran the last few feet to the door. If the structure was obscenely mangled from the outside, it looked normal compared to the interior. Doors and stairs were everywhere, walls were where floors and ceilings should have been and vice versa, everything was at odd angles that made my head swim. I started up one staircase, but he stairs got progressively larger and larger until I couldn't climb up to the next step. I opened a door and nearly fell out the side of the tower. I got a good look at the moat then, and it was deep. As deep as things get. I ran into a hallway opposite the door, and found it twisted and inclined until it became too steep to progress further. I opened another door to one side and saw myself looking through the door at myself looking through the door ad infinitum. I quickly slammed it and tried to find something to hold onto while I caught my breath. Nausea overwhelemed me, the hallway tipped even further and I went tumbling down as everything went black.

I woke in a slightly tilted room with a lit fireplace. There were some beakers and scientific equipment on a table nearby, and one wall opened onto a balcony lined with barbed wire. Something moved on the other side of the room, I looked and saw Momma, even more revolting at this proximity. Its long black frilly dress brushed against the floor as it walked over to me. I was pretty sure it was a man, looking at its face. It had manly features, and a little black stubble on its chin. Its lips were smeared with thick purple lipstick and its hair was a black mess of curls that listed to one side, it was obviously a wig, and a bad one at that.

"Do you like my house?" it asked in that gravelly voice.

"You must be Momma." I said.

The thing laughed. "So you met my babies. Sweet little dumplings aren't they? I made them here in my lab. I like to work up here in the top of the tower, I can see for miles. It shuffled over to the balcony and looked out with a smile. "The moon is so bright tonight."

I pushed myself up to my feet. I steadied myself with the table. The legs were different lengths to accomodate for the slope of the floor, which slanted down towards the balcony where Momma stood with her fat little fingers clasped behind her back. Something bubbled in a beaker as some blue fluid dripped into it from a tube.

"I'm making a boy next." Said Momma, turning back to face me. I think I'll call him Tully."

"You're a monster." I said, my voice trembling nearly as much as my knees.

"Oh am I?", it said, cocking its head to one side, its jowls sloshing with the shift.

"Thats not how you make babies." I said.

"Oh really?", It said, endlessly amused. "Well why don't you show me your way sweetheart?"

Something snapped in me, I suddenly felt as though I was outside myself, watching myself act, though I knew it was really me doing it. I charged down the floor at the amorphous mass. I leaped at it, the slope helping my momentum. We locked lips and its arms flailed as it slammed backward into the barbed wire. My embrace couldn't quite reach all the way around its thick blubbery body. I felt the warm trickle of its blood running down its back and over my hands. It moaned as I kissed it, its wig slid off and fell over the wire railing. I pressed myself firmly against its bloated body and continued making out with it, running my tongue around this inside of its filthy mouth. I could hear the cloth and flesh tearing as its back ground against the rusty barbs. There was a snap and a twang as one of the wires gave, and then another, and another. I released it as the last wire snapped and watched as it tumbled over the edge. I caught a glimpse up its torn dress as it fell, and I was surprised to see that it was indeed a woman. "Pity I had to kill her", I remember thinking as I wiped the lipstick off my face, "A pussy after all, is a pussy." Her body fell down all thirty stories, smashed against the far edge of the moat with a wet crunch, and then continued its fall into the endless fiery abyss below. I turned and looked for a the way out.

Fortunately it was easier getting out than in. Without Mommas warped presence, the buliding seemed to make more sense. I walked quickly however, because whatever was holding the tower together seemed to be gone as well, I could hear creaking and twisting metal and wood all around me as I ran down the ricketty staircases. I breathed a sigh of releif when I was back across the board and on the clearing with the picnic tables. I looked around but I didn't see any sign of the children. I started to panic, and when I searched the grounds my fears were confirmed. Their bodies lay around the open grave where Phoebe still lay in her cardboard coffin filled with pink flowers. Each of them clutched a handful of the flowers. Apparently they were performing some final ceremony for the girl when I destroyed the thing which had been connected to their life-force. I fell to my knees and held my head in my hands, unable to take in the ghastly scene. "What have I done, what have I done", I repeated over and over.

"Rupert.", came a voice behind me. I jumped and spun around to see Frankie standing there, with a fistfull of pink flowers in each hand. "They're all dead Rupert, we have to bury them good or Momma will be angry."

"Momma's dead, Frankie, she can't hurt you anymore. You should be dead too, I don't understand...", My head was a mass of confusion.

"I'm not like them you know", Frankie said. "I wasn't made in the lab, I was born, I had a mom and dad once." He seemed quite proud of the fact.

"Listen Frankie, theres no time to bury anybody, We've got to get the hell out of here." Even as I spoke, there was a crash and the ground shook. One of the spires sticking out precariously from the tower had broken off and smashed on the ground. I grabbed Frankie by the hand and ran down the little path through the woods towards the gate as the ungainly structure creaked and snapped behind us. Had I looked down and seen the vicious grin on the kid's face I might have had some warning about what I was in for on the road ahead. Perhaps it was for the best that none of us knew the future though. A cloud blocked out the moonlight as we ran through the little iron gate to where Gregory sat with his engine allready running and his front doors open.

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