sHe: THE RISE OF THE NEW BREEDS [Book 1]

Chapter 2

ON A HOSPITAL BED IN OHIO was Roberta Jensen, lying motionless, recuperating after surgery for gunshot wounds. A Hispanic nurse came, and she checked on her chart. Roberta's eyes were closed, fluttered with REM twitches, as she was in the middle of a dream...

On an open road with loud winds howling, the ten-year-old Roberta was riding a bicycle against it. She peered up at the two cyclists, in the lead afar. She recognized that it was Laura riding her bicycle with a stranger — it was certainly not any of her sister's BFF — certainly not that Haley Eastman, whom she loathed for bullying and teasing her always for her tomboy ascribe in their campestral Wellsville school, that was equally unkind too, to her sexual preference...

'Robbie, show me your pee-pee — if you don't have one — then show me your titties!'

Roberta paddled fast to catch up, while she called out — to slow the cyclists ahead of her...

"Laura! Laura, wait — I am coming!"

But, Roberta was left far behind in the cornfields road — she next saw a figure of a woman standing by the tractor on the wayside — she cycled closer to discover that it was her mother, Martha. Then, Roberta kvetched in a whining tone to her...

"Mum, Laura is going too fast — and I can't keep up."

"Robbie, you are slow because you are fat."

The determined younger daughter reacted back...

"No, I will catch up with her, Mum!"

Roberta rode harder and she looked up and saw four people standing in the middle of the road ahead — it was Bing, Pokémon, Sega and Leroy — the four Black Intersexuals who pimped the albino girl in the streets.

They all raised their guns up and started firing at the approaching Roberta, who eyed at the bullets coming at her like a swarm of angry hornets. She shut her eyes tightly and peddled even arduously — she rode straight crashing into them...

They all shattered like a mirror into thousands of shard bits, falling on the road. The sunlight was reflecting on the pieces of mirror bits — it was like a golden path on the road — while Roberta panted in relief, raced on it, with the sound of crackling glass beneath her.

She foraged ahead to gestate that Laura was still a distance away. It made her peddling even harder to catch up. A yellow school bus came from behind her — and out of the windows, some ten-year-old boys cheered for her...

"Your sister is not far ahead — you can do it, Robbie!"

The flesh on their faces peeled off and dropped — the boys turned into skeletons — and their skull faces kept on encouraging by chanting her name...

"Go, Robbie, Go!"

The bus then overtook her bicycle, and Roberta saw an advertisement poster pasted on the back of the bus — it was a grinning, Big Manny, her beat-cop partner — who was seated among a group of pedigree toy dogs, the kind that her Aunt Flo owned. Mandy Thompson was now the ambassador of the Korean food-chain called Frankie Sun. Manny held up a Korean chilli-dog made of canine meat, with the word caption below the advertisement...

'Eat for free.'

The yellow bus vanished into a fog ahead on the road — and the surroundings now got darker, and gradually it turned to night. Roberta rode with her headlights flashing into the murky mist on the path. She saw the blurry figures of Laura and the stranger cycling, just a few feet ahead of her. Roberta exclaimed out loud in excitement...

"Laura! I caught up with you."

Her elder sister glanced back and replied cheerfully...

"Hey Robbie, we are going to the lake — do you want to follow us?"

"Yes!"

Finally, her sister had bidden her be part of the circle that went outdoors — but, Laura was not riding with her friend, — neither it was Connie nor Haley — and it was too foggy to distinguish the stranger's face.

"Laura," Roberta asked out. "Who is that with you?"

The stranger turned and revealed her face — Roberta identified a second Laura — and the dead ringer who looked exactly like her.

The unnerved Roberta instantly hit the brakes — and stopped her bike...

'How can there be two Lauras?'

She heard Laura's voice disappearing into the thick fog ...

"Robbie, if you change your mind — we will be at the lake."

*

The older Roberta's eyes opened in the darken wardroom, she started to groan and grimace out from her post-surgery pains. A shadowy figure of a nurse approached nearer, and comforted her in the darkness...

"Relax there, the morphine will kick-in — and the pain will soon go away."

The sweating Roberta looked up at the nurse with her indistinct vision — and saw the adult Laura in the nurse's uniform, smiling down at her after she had administered the dosage. The person in the white uniform started to walk away — Roberta's hand reached out, and she slurred ...

"La-u-ra."

Before her death, their mother had said that Laura should take care of her...

'But, two Lauras? How was that even possible?'

Roberta closed her tearful eyes — and drifted back into a deeper state of spoor, backing away from the pains of her gunshots wounds...

'Two Lauras?'

*

Twenty-seven miles away was the same cop's Intersexual nephew — who was born identical to his consanguineous mother — someone whom he does not know that she even existed. Reeves was burning the midnight-oil, by the window, studying for his re-sit of the Q n A in the advanced series exams, while the rest of the Wesleyan boys were in the middle of their deep slumber.

Somehow, his mind was not there at that moment — he looked out of the window into the night at the campus grounds — at the far end of the vast vicinity outside, was the old wall — it waited for his decision of being a free-male in civilization, the moment he jumped over it...

It had been three days since he had an argument with Joe at their 'secret place' — and he had been scheming with his solo getaway plan, ever since that day.