Oakaigus #1: Red Bloom Read online

  OAKAIGUS

  Written by Nathan S. A. Sanders

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any way without the written consent of the author.

  Copyright © 2016 Nathan S. Armstrong Sanders

  All Rights Reserved

  U.S.A.

  Book illustration by Nathan S. Armstrong Sanders

  CHAPTER 1

  At the rising sun, a petite girl awoke from her cloth-stuffed pillow. She felt a slight tingle on her forearm as her vision sharpened. She looked down and saw a furry, 4-legged insect with a red stringer scurrying up her arm. “Hate these things,” she mumbled as she slapped her palm against her light-brown skin.

  She lifted her palm up, only to find nothing there.

  “Dammit,” she said as she lunged across her bed to grab her sandal. “Where’d it go?!”

  Her eyes darted across the dusty room, but she couldn’t find it.

  Finally, the corner of her vision caught a small, red blur to her left.

  She turned, and there the insect was; latched to the wall with its red stinger erect.

  She felt her heart drop in her chest as she held her breath.

  The insect launched itself towards her neck, shrouded in a blur.

  With the stinger only an inch away from her neck, her body jerked to the side. She swung her sandal around, catching the insect and crushing its body against the rocky wall.

  “Phew,” she said as she lowered her sandal.

  She rose to her feet and treaded across the rugged, stone floor coated in a bed of dust.

  She stopped at another bed across the room, occupied by a tan-skinned boy fidgeting and whispering in his sleep.

  “Jo,” she said as she tapped his shoulder.

  No response.

  “JO!”

  Still no response.

  Her brow slumped into a furrow. “Allllright,” she said as she stretched her fingers forward.

  She extended her arm towards his forehead, aiming her fingers at the small mineral protruding from the middle of his head.

  Once she plucked it, his eyes bulged open the instant he felt the shock rattle down the nerves of his spine. He slapped his hand over his mouth, breathing heavily out of his nose.

  “WHY,” he said with a heaving breath, “WOULD YOU DO THAT?!”

  “Sorry,” the girl said with her finger up her nose, “I tapped you but you wouldn’t get up. We gotta’ work today.”

  He sighed as he rubbed the mineral on his head.

  “Oh yeah,” the girl said, “you were moving in your sleep again. Bad dream?”

  “Uhhh…”

  “…Was it mom again?”

  The boy’s muscles tensed all at once, making him dig his fingers into his lap.

  The girl sighed as she reached down to gently place her hand on his shoulder.

  “Don’t worry, Jo,’ we’ll find her.”

  “I hope you’re right,” the boy said with his head down.

  Suddenly, they both heard a booming voice from the down the stairs: “JOGEN! LILAH! WHAT’S TAKING YA’?!”

  “Oh,” Lilah said, “COMING!”

  Lilah ran back over to her side of the room and forced a clothing bag open. She flung out wrinkled, brown pants and a burgundy tunic with tiny holes in it. “Better hurry up,” she said as she pulled her pants over her shorts.

  Jogen rose to his feet, stretched out his lanky body and scratched through his curly, brown hair. “Yeah,” he mumbled.

  Soon afterwards, Lilah came fully-dressed, hopping down the stairs and into a kitchen filled with steam from a boiling pot.

  “You’re late,” said a tall, bald man with his heavy voice.

  “I was trying to kill a bug.”

  “And Jo?”

  “Uhhh-“

  Before Lilah could answer, she heard steady footsteps up the stairwell. She turned around and saw Jogen slowly hopping down the stairs on one leg, struggling to lace on his right shoe.

  “I-I’m here,” Jogen said, “I just gotta’ get this--AH!”

  Jogen lost his balance and rolled down the last few stairs crashing into a stack of iron pots. “S-Sorry Mr. Singu…”

  Mr. Singu rubbed the back of his neck and shook his head. “It’s fine,” he said with an exhale.

  With his shoe on, Jogen hopped to his feet and scrambled to stack the pots back up. When he finished, he stood next to Lilah, brushing off his tunic.

  “Anyway,” Mr. Singu said, “today’s gonna’ be a bit different. A couple of my associates actually spotted some Jhama Jhama berries growing in the Badigeon Fields.”

  “Wait,” Lilah said, “I thought those couldn’t grow in this region.”

  “I thought so too,” Jogen added.

  “Same here,” Mr. Singu said, “as long as we knew, they couldn’t grow in climates this hot. But for some reason, they just started popping up…”

  “So you want us to pick them?” Lilah asked.

  “Yup! This is our chance to get a leg up over the other cooks, so we need to pick all the bushes ‘fore they find out!”

  “Meaning, this is gonna’ be a long day,” Lilah said with her finger up her nose.

  “I’ll make it worth your while! I’ve got a surprise for you two when you’re finished!”

  “Really?” Jogen said with a smile.

  “Not only that, BUT, if you two can pick all the bushes before 28:30 AM, I’ll throw in an extra surprise!”

  A smirk grew on Lilah’s face.

  “I’LL WIN,” Lilah shouted.

  “Uh,” Jogen said softly, “I don’t think it’s a competi-“

  “READY, SET G-“

  “WAIT,” Mr. Singu said, “before you go, make sure you use the bulk carts. You’ll need ‘em. I want whole bushes: leaves, wood, everything.”

  “What for?” Lilah asked.

  “Jhama leaves give a real, exotic kick to the flavor when you use it for seasoning, and the wood is supposed to give meat a special flavor when smoking with it.”

  “Okay, got it. We’re off!” Lilah rushed to the back of the kitchen and through the back door connected to the shed.

  “Oh,” Jogen said, “uh, see you later!” Jogen ran after Lilah to the shed.

  “Be safe out there!” Mr. Singu yelled.

  Mr. Singu’s halved grin dissolved into a straight face. “Still,” he said under his breath, “why are those berries growing here? Strange…”

  CHAPTER 2

  From inside the shed, Jogen and Lilah stepped out into the blistering sun, pulling out two, four-wheeled carts cladded in iron with crates attached to the back of them.

  Lilah hopped on her cart and fastened the safety belt over her waist.

  “Ready?” she said.

  “Yeah,” Jogen replied as he fastened his belt.

  The two of them started to pedal and rode off from the sandy lot of the diner.

  Jogen and Lilah made their way onto the rugged, muddy streets of their town. They rode past smaller children kicking rubber balls and women filling the atmosphere with the smoky aroma of fifty-pound ribs that massaged their noses.

  Lilah looked to her side and saw a man lying on the ground, groaning as he massaged his ribcage that protruded through his skin. His wrinkled stomach touched all the way to his spine, while his bone-thin limbs showed patched of scabs on his crackling, dry skin.

  “Poor guy,” Lilah said.

  “They still haven’t found a cure for PID yet?” Jogen said.

  “I don’t think so. He’s probably gonna’ die there…”

  “Dammit.”

  The two of them rode past more people congregating near abandoned buildings. On one of the buildings, there were wrinkled
, dirty posters hanging up with pictures of people that had the word ‘Missing’ at the bottom of each poster.

  Jogen turned his head to gaze at a poster with the picture of a brown-skinned woman with long, dark hair.

  Jogen’s grip tightened on his cart handle as he gritted his teeth.

  Lilah glanced over at Jogen and saw the shift in his expressions.

  “We’ll find her,” she said, “whoever took her is gonna’ get theirs. Trust.”

  Jogen squinted his eyes as he turned his attention to the path in front of him.

  As they rode through the streets, Lilah stopped to look down a dead-end alleyway. She saw a man standing above a cornered woman. “Hey, Jo, look,” she said.

  Jogen looked over in the alley. “What’s going on?”

  “Not sure…”

  As they stared longer, they saw the man choke the woman with one hand, and ripping off her garments with his other hand.

  “NO,” the woman cried, “PLEASE STOP!”

  Lilah noticed people who glanced in the alley but kept walking by. Her fist shook as blood rushed to her face. “I HATE these people.”

  Lilah pulled her safety belt off and jumped off her cart to look in the back cart. She grabbed a toolbox and pulled out a short, sharp blade.

  Lilah dashed into the alley with the blade behind her back.

  While the man tried to tug the woman’s pants off, he stopped the moment he heard footsteps.

  Lilah shouted at the top of her lungs, swinging the blade from behind her back. In an instant, Lilah’s blade sliced through all the meat in the man’s wrist.

  The man hollered as his forearm burned with a bloody sting. He pulled the bottom of his shirt over his bleeding arm and fell down. He squirmed in the dirt with drool leaking from his mouth, tensing every part of his body to fight the shock.

  Lilah swiped her blade through the air and splattered blood in the man’s eyes. Lilah then snorted up a ball of saliva in her mouth and spit in the man’s face.

  Lilah reached out her hand to the woman. “You okay,” she asked.

  The woman nodded a “yes” with tears in her eyes as she fixed her clothes back on. The woman stumbled to take her first step, but caught her balance and ran away.

  “Wait,” Lilah shouted.

  “THANK YOU,” the woman replied as she kept running.

  Jogen watched as the woman ran away into the street. “Hope she’s alright,” he said.

  Lilah left the man wallowing in the alley and hopped back on her cart.

  “Damn,” she said, “I was trying to see if we could help her. Guess we better get going.”

  Jogen and Lilah resumed pedaling.

  As the minutes passed by, Jogen and Lilah rode through the town quietly, focusing on the road.

  “Hey, Li,” Jogen said, “what made you do that back there?”

  Lilah let out a slow, deep sigh, “It’s just…I feel like nobody cares about girls around here.”

  “Hm?”

  “When something like that happens here, people act like they don’t see it. You saw ‘em! People walked right past her and didn’t even think to help! And what makes it worse, when people DO pay attention, they act like it’s the girl’s fault.”

  “Why?!”

  “I really don’t get it. I just can’t wait ‘til I’m bigger so I can change all this.”

  “How?”

  “Not really sure. I just know that I wanna’ fight for girls to be treated right.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “What about you, Jo?”

  “H-Huh?”

  “You thought about what you wanna’ do when you get bigger?”

  Jogen felt his heartbeat punch against his chest. “O-oh, I, uh…I’m gonna’ be an ‘architect.’ Yeah…”

  “…You don’t sound too sure…”

  Jogen exhaled as he relaxed his body. “You’re right,” he said, “truth is, I really don’t know. Just thinking about it kinda’ scares me…I just need more time, that’s all.”

  “Okay.”

  CHAPTER 3

  After a long, quiet ride through the countryside, Jogen and Lilah arrived at Badigeon Fields. The Fields were filled with stubby, old trees and tall, thick grass.

  Jogen and Lilah slowed their pace to scan the whole area.

  “...Wait,” Lilah said, “I see ‘em!”

  Across the field, they gazed at the bushes with spiky leaves around pink & yellow berries.

  Jogen and Lilah hopped off their carts and dug through their toolboxes. They each pulled out a thick saw.

  When they walked over to the bushes, they went straight to chopping the thick roots of two bushes.

  “Why are these leaves so damn sharp,” Lilah said with a grunt.

  As they continued chopping, Lilah paused for a minute to rise to her feet. When she rose up, the skin of her ankle scraped against the hard, sharp tip of a leaf.

  “Ow,” she yelled.

  She looked down at the small line of blood slowly leaking from her wound. “Well,” she said, “it doesn’t look too bad.”

  As Lilah searched through her sidepouch, Jogen heard quick, pattering steps in the grass. He looked down and saw nothing, but he could still hear the steps.

  After staring down at the grass for a while, Jogen could finally see a red silhouette shifting through the grass.

  Popping out from the grass was a white, eight-legged insect with red spots that was the size of Lilah’s hand.

  “W-WHAT THE—“Jogen stuttered as he pointed to the insect. Lilah looked up at Jogen’s widened eyes. “What are you doi—AH!”

  Lilah felt her heart skip a beat the instant she saw the insect pounce towards her leg. She squirmed as she felt the insect’s moist shell pressed against her skin.

  The insect opened its mouth, revealing four rows of tiny, sharp teeth. It sunk its fangs into Lilah’s cut, swishing around its rows of teeth and drinking her blood.

  A shocking sting coursed through Lilah’s leg as the pain made her muscles lose strength.

  Jogen sat frozen in place with his jaw dropped and his heart pounding.

  The insect pulled its bloody teeth out from her wound and it let out a high-pitched screech, echoing through the fields.

  Jogen looked up at the grass as he listened to the screech fade into the distance.

  Soon, silence.

  It wasn’t long after that when Jogen heard grass shuffling again, faster and heavier than last time.

  A large colony of the insect’s babies erupted through the grass, shrieking over top one another.

  The baby insects swarmed Lilah’s ankle and immediately sunk their fangs into her veins.

  “I…c-can’t, move…” Lilah said in a cracking grumble.

  The smacking of ripped, wet flesh, along with Lilah’s gasps for air haunted Jogen’s ears.

  “Why,” Jogen thought in his head, “why can’t I move? MOVE!!!”

  His legs trembled as he fought to get up, but his feet stayed locked to the ground. He dug his fingers through the dirt. With each deep breath, he tried to force his body forward, but his legs failed him.

  Jogen watched as Lilah’s skin was devoured into the belly of the insects. They chomped through as the stench of dirt and blood slithered down his throat.

  Lilah strained to speak, but she felt her lungs lock up every time she took a breath. “He-…Help…”

  Jogen closed his eyes as tears rose up under his eyes.

  After many minutes, the insects’ bellies were finally fully. Dozen by dozen, the insects crawled away and disappeared into the grass.

  Jogen gulped deeply while taking slow breaths. He slowly opened his eyes, only to see the sight of Lilah’s leg shredded wide open, revealing bite marks down to her ankle bone marrow.

  “Li…” Jogen mumbled under his breath.

  As he stared longer, he felt a hot sensation rising in his chest.

  “….FUUUUUUUUUUCK,” he cried out, “I’M SO FUCKING WEAK!”

  He
clenched his fingernails deep into his palms, forming a tight fist that he punched himself in his cheekbone with.

  Over, and over, over, Jogen rocked his skull with the brunt of his own fist.

  “FUCK! FUCK, FUCK, FUCK!!! I’M SORRY!”

  Jogen soon found the strength to rise to his feet. With tears streaming down his face, he picked Lilah up, resting her in his forearms.

  Lilah tried to speak, but she could only hiccup gasps. She tried to move, but aches gripped her muscles with every contraction.

  “Gotta find a clinic,” Jogen said while panting, “but where?!”