PUFFY
By
Charles Sarlanis
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Charles Sarlanis
Smashwords Edition – License Notes.
Thank you for downloading this free Ebook. It may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided it remains in its complete original form; share it freely. If you enjoyed this story, know that the pleasure was doubly mine.
Thanks – potbelly11
For use of the cover photo
snertshvemofun@aol.com
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PUFFY
She was not a tall girl, pushed five-five wearing flats; but decidedly well proportioned, fine balcony, beautiful pins. It was the softly segmented distribution which produced the resemblance to ‘Pierre’, let’s call him, the Michelin man. Not that the puffiness was so emphatic that it detracted. On the contrary, what it did was accentuate what hardly needed accentuating.
She was a good-looking cookie, turned male heads without exception, and if not for the other, as it later developed, Eve would have been aggressively pursued by every male who thought he had a chance. What turned them away, one and all, was the swelling belly, when it was noticeable; her notoriety when it was not. Of course, that was at first; before everything got turned around.
I must confess to two things before continuing with Eve’s story. I was not her confidant early on, even though we were close, and I never got access to her diary, if she kept one. What I relate is what I observed as an intern in the Burleigh Station Clinic before it became; well, you know what it became.
Second, I am a male. Look for no deep insights into the female psyche; certainly not from me. I freely admit, females completely mystify me; they are beyond understanding, perhaps even to themselves.
Sorry, there is a third. If you expect to read salacious details out of Puffy’s sex life, then I suggest you move on. There is but that one unfathomable instance the details of which are factually, publically established and fortunately, or unfortunately, I was not involved or a witness. I know only as much of that episode as what the participants gave or sold to the media.
One final note; do not believe any of the horror stories you heard or read about me. Lies, lies, lies – first to last.
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Eve was a beautiful baby, pink and plump; so plump all the visitors wanted to squeeze those dear, little sausage link toes. ‘Miss Michelin’ they called her because of the resemblance to the tire company’s chubby mascot. “Oh, she’s so puffy,” said one aunt, and ‘Puffy’ she became from that moment on.
Puffy was an appropriate cradle-time nickname and more so when she filled out in her early teens. Cream puff puffy she was and equally delicious sitting, standing or Marilyn Monroe-like jiggling along.
Her pregnancy was not evident until the start of the third trimester. Even then, it did not detract; her swelling belly only added to the already attractive ‘Rubens’ puffiness. The rosy pink which pregnancy brought to her cheeks; well, it made you want to hug and kiss her and lick away the sugar cone sweetness that was there.
With all those physical assets, Eve should have been in heaven and her hubby even happier. Problem was Eve had no hubby or even an engagement ring for the simple reason that she had never gone to a dance, dated; heck, she had never even sat next to a boy in church.
Puffy was ‘The girl in White’. Her winter outfits made her invisible in the snowy landscape. In summer, she was frosty-white unapproachable, talked only to the girls whose desks abutted hers and never raised her eyes to look at a boy or male teacher. She led a super-overprotected life under the firm, uncompromising control of parents who were deeply religious and protective of the one life they loved and valued above all others.
Unwed mother was what Eve became, and naturally, that event turned everything upside down as far as her parents and community were concerned. Love, respect, reputation went out the door, in came condemnation and . . . nothing else; certainly not understanding or forgiveness.
Eve for her part felt no shame, and could find no error in her Christian conduct. She had been done to in a gentle way she had no reason to think wrong because her knowledge of wrong was one of darkly spoken words without definition or example. She occupied the highest plane of pure naivety and, quite possibly, sat comfortably alone at the apex.
Mom and dad didn’t know what to make of her; could not understand how they, two fully Christian souls, had combined to produce such an unholy abomination of an offspring. They didn’t say it, but each blamed the other.
The doctors told them it had nothing to do with what they were or how they came together. Things happen. The child had to be something of a mutation. That bit of consolation did everything but put the parents at ease. It made them feel like circus freaks by placing them in the same cage with Eve and on public display.
They were regular church-goers and devoted Christians, tithed without stint or regret; could not understand why God burdened them so or chose their child, their only child, for one of His ‘mutants’. They thought back to Eve’s birth and the happiness she exploded into their lives. Twenty years of impregnation effort which had, after so many missed-periods’ false alarms, turned what once had been loads of guilty fun into unrewarding work.
Their happy marriage collapsed when, at age fifteen and half, Eve was found to be ‘in that way’. Life changed from complete happiness to agonizing dismay. Distressed, but good parents that they were, they openly shouldered the blame. In private, they laid the entire guilt on Eve.
In private, the outraged congregation, including and most emphatically Pastor Goodbook, condemned the family. There was too much sinful smoke rising out of that chimney for but one person to be bad. There had to be more than one rotten apple in that barrel of immorality.
Eve’s was one of the big Biblical sins, number seven of the top ten, and one which cannot be explained away, easily forgiven, or worse yet, hidden. She was as her friends smirked and the boys laughed – “knocked up higher ‘n a kite”.
Eve was almost six months into her first pregnancy and still without a clue as to what was going on. Her tummy was doing strange things; at least, she thought they were strange, but she had no way of being sure because many things puzzled her. Where to turn? She had no advisor or confidant. She could not talk to mom about such and shrank from approaching dad on any subject outside of school study or the Bible.
Three months down the road, her life would change in ways neither she nor anyone else in the world could foresee or imagine. Not the birth; all else being normal, that was a sure thing. What was not was the aftermath of the afterbirth.
Eve gave birth to a healthy boy which was enough to start the talk and plenty enough to keep it going for a good spell. What looked to be the notoriety clincher was that nobody stepped forward to claim the fatherhood honor although some five baseball team players worried sick that she might make a choice.
Eve had nothing but good memories from the episode. It had been a wonderfully new experience, and pleasurable as nothing before or since. It was a ‘gang bang’, and she got a bang out of it. Socially innocent, ignorant even of the basics of animal husbandry, she accepted the boys’ solicitousness without questioning the motivation.
Making her way home after school, and walking past right field of the baseball diamond, she caught a hit ball on her head and fell dazed to the grass. It was comical in a way because of how she reacted to the warning shouts from the players. She turned to shield her eyes from the lowering sun and, Peanuts’ Lucy style, got ‘BONK!’ bopped on her curly cob.
It was the end of practice, and there were only the five players left, enjoying juke ball: making nickel bets on next hit, strike out, error or whatever.
‘Gulliver Swift’ they called the team lead-off because he was their best hitter to all fields but not for distance. Fast on the bases is what he was, and that accounted for the descriptive nickname. True to form, he beat the outfielder to the stricken miss, happy that it was not his batted ball which had done the hurt to ‘Miss Icicle’. That’s what they called her in their lustful, bragging moments.
Her eyes were open, no bleeding and she looked to be all right, but a head knock; well, you never can tell. “Are you alright?” Swifty asked, his concern plainly sincere.
“I think so,” said Eve as she rubbed the swelling knot on her pate.
What happened next defies explanation – the action of the party of the first part, as they say, and the parties of the second part, of which they were five. They were boys, which explains a lot, and they were in a group, which explains much more. What is most inexplicable was Eve’s consent, compliance; her not screaming bloody murder when things got hot.
Swift was more puzzled about what he did next and all the next(s) after that. It was so unlike him, so unlike anything he ever did before or after. So many questions; so few answers. Why move a possible concussion injury? Why to the gym? Why not the Burleigh Clinic? Like me, you can ask all you like. It happened the way it did because that’s the way it came about; which explains nothing – and everything.
“We better check that you are not hurt,” said Swift, and receiving no objection from Eve, he picked her up and carried her into the gym. Eve could not recall ever having been hugged and the new experience must have been overwhelming and why what happened did. The feel of muscled male body and hypnotic animal aroma of warm sweat, pheromones colliding . . .
Forgive me. I can’t go on because I am making this up. That must be how it happened or pretty close to it. In any case, we learned that Swift led off and the others followed. No complaint from Eve, before or after, to the cops or anyone else. When the game was over, they said, she thanked them kindly and went home where she took a shower all the while thanking God for her fine home and life’s surprising goodness.
It all changed six months later, of course, and when it did, when mom recognized the condition, when dad learned and the pastor, and from him the flock; Eve went into lockdown basement prison, one meal a day and shoeless. It was start of summer vacation and end of Eve’s sophomore year, and, as it turned out, her graduation from scholastic pursuits. Disgraced and now starting to ‘show’, however modestly, she could not be allowed to mingle with ‘good’ people.
Shut off from all outside visitors, no radio or telephone contact permitted; not even a book or magazine to read; mom’s family Bible was set on her cot with directions to read, memorize and repent else her soul go plunging deadweight downstairs, perhaps already half way there no matter what, but to do her best, begging God’s merciful forgiveness, to secure her undeserved salvation.
She did her best, she truly did, but memorization came hard for her. She had Genesis, line by line about a quarter the way through but anything after that caused a corresponding tail end line drop-off to any new addition. She gave it up as a lost cause and concentrated on polishing the Genesis lines she could remember. She was Eve, like the other, and to that first Eve prayed for help because, like her, she got ‘BONKED’ by an apple.
Mom and dad asked for God’s forgiveness for their lost child, and they prayed mightily alone and together. To them, Eve was a ‘hell-diver’ no matter what she did for although they asked God to forgive, they could neither pardon nor forget. Daughter Eve had shamed them before God and, far worse, before their friends and church.
They took the public punishment for their parental fault like the brave couple they were. To their mind, they had done their best, could find no fault in past performance, and were resolved to face it out without flinching. Quite likely they would have succeeded had it not been for what transpired after the birth. Circumstances contrived to complicate matters, some accidental – some not.
What was not was the naming of Eve’s son as ‘Eveson’. There was precedent for the name, but not in Genesis. The best she could get from there was Cain or Abel. She was not too hot on either. Names like ‘Shem’ were an absolute turnoff.
When hospital administrators were asked how the naming had come about, they learned that the name was suggested by a Bible-reader intern (me); that her name being Eve, this being her first child, and Genesis being all the Bible she could quote, her son should bear the name ‘Adamson.’ Eve said, “I want ‘Eveson’,” and that was it.
But that, of course, was small potatoes compared to the other circumstance. Former friends, acquaintances and neighbors labeled the naming a blatant attempt to disguise and inflate the significance of a sinful personal experience by association it with a holy Biblical event. Eve’s baby naming was taken in that light; frowns all around the small town. When Eveson caught his welcoming buttslap (still a Burleigh Clinic practice) and opened his eyes to life on the outside, the doc’s tests showed to their utter, yes indeed and most emphatically, to their utter amazement and disbelief, that there was another issue in the pipeline programming arrival; this one female.
The doctor handed the baby to a nurse; checked, rechecked, and grunted, “They’s a ‘nuther one.”
“Twins, how lovely,” said the nurse.
“No, not a twin,” said the doc.
Twins the doctor could accept with calm resignation to the missed tee time, but not this. What he found was that Eve was pregnant (three months along, he learned later). Test followed test but all results were positive and conclusive.
The clinic went ballistic with the entire staff including cleaners and drivers passing in review. It could not be, was unnatural, possibly demonic if not impossible were only some of the views. Nothing is impossible they told each other even though not believing their own words.
Not the docs. Their text books told them this ‘was’ impossible; Good Lord, it had to be. How could Eve possibly be pregs if she had been without that kind of necessary implemental contact for the past three months? Sperm longevity never exceeded three days; not even by the most formidable, slowpoke female ‘X’ chromo.
“Once a fornicator, always a fornicator” was the final judgment of everyone including the docs. A sly, sinful witch is what was Eve declared one and all. No other conclusion could stand the test.
The intern was of a more scientific and less judgmental mold. He had ‘scientific intuition’ and initiative. He prepared a paper for submission to the JAMA, the Journal of American Medical Association. It was long and finely detailed. In his paper he brilliantly theorized that, excluding actual coital insemination, only two other possibilities existed, both of which should be funded with the theorist as project manager.
First, although not his first choice, was that sperm had stationed themselves in the vaginal nooks and crannies, ‘the byways’, by a process he hoped to discover through intensive investigation. On station they somehow managed to remain in a swirling pattern or, more likely dormant, bunched and stacked up, cartridge-belt style before firing upchannel for the egg strike.
That option he thought improbable but worth pursuit. Rigid adherence to protocol, he insisted, demanded thoroughness and objectivity. What he preferred, what he theorized as most probable, was the fetus as the action man. ‘Consecutive Conception +++Perpetual Pregnancy’, he titled his paper. The title was as convincingly beautiful as the theory. To his mind, reading it was sufficient to prove his thesis.
But he left nothing to chance. He took pains not only in the paper’s spelling accuracy but in its grammatical perfection. Attentive to every detail, he personally delivered the paper, weather-wrapped, to the journal offices in Chicago. Huge expense – colossal disappointment. The establishment proved itself nothing more than a nest of bureaucratic blind mice. How else explain? Had he stopped for coffee, he would not have beaten the rejection letter with its standard ‘Thanks, but no thanks’ accompanied by an order form for a JAMA lifetime subscription (80% off newsstand).
Eveson’s birth was an oddity, no getting around that, and it went into the medical books as just that; one of those untidy tidbits that professors enjoy tossing out to show they are up on even the most arcane and unsolved riddles.
Eve underwent some standard external tests, but neither she nor her parents, and they loudly emphatic, would allow any invasive investigation into the body mystery; the parents because it shamed them and Eve because she had this perfect butterball to feed, cuddle and love. She didn’t care to be bothered.
Only sixteen but Eve could not be outdone as a mother. It was as if she had been trained from birth. She had not, of course; what she had was Grade-A maternal instinct, and hers was sure. Her parents interfered in everything she did, but Eve proved to be strong-willed – stronger than her parents combined.
Were she not the courageously independent person she proved to be, life for Eve could have been a Christian purgatory. She survived by steadfastly ignoring her parents for the six months it took to complete her second pregnancy.
Eve may have once been naïve and easily controlled, but motherhood changed all that. She was almost seventeen and as adult in her mind as she would ever be. That is, she knew her own mind, and had confidence in her common sense. She felt liberated in spirit and from the constraints of adults. With the birth of ‘Eveseve’ all of those qualities showed themselves.
Eveseve’s naming would hardly have been newsworthy; and by itself certainly not; but following and in conjunction with Eveson; and the other circumstance; well, that was one Eve-birth too many for the religious community. “Sinner Eve,” they said was “transparently exploiting the Bible for publicity.” “Shame,” they cried, “blasphemy, sacrilege, outrage.”
But the medics were now truly confused, thrilled confused but confused for sure. Eve, they found, was three months pregnant; same as last time, but now it was time for answers. Two in a row could not be passed off as a freakish occurrence as, for example, six-toed foot or a two-headed animal. What if it happened again? The medical profession would be made a laughing stock if unable to provide a logical, a physical answer.
The medics parceled out the problem to a hundred labs with an urgent request for funding the research. This was an exciting happening for the ambitious scientists, and the pharmaceutical money flowed. The answer to this could make Viagra look like small change.
For the mags and papers it was perfectly suited for wild flights of imagination. The Eve births were predictable, unique; and perfect fodder for ten-second spots. Editors salivated and reporters outdid each other. They didn’t believe it, and they did. They thought of her as America’s first lady, a national monument, and a living guarantor of national survival. They thought she would save the West from bourgeoning East, and that her exploding ovaries represented a greater danger than an atomic Armageddon.
“What happens if her progeny are non-stop birthers like their ma? What if one of them marries a Chinese, and the sperm virus spreads contagion throughout China humps the Himalayas and infects India?” They quoted Thomas Malthus: “Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio” and “The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man”.
“Enough Eves and there will be universal famine,” cried the Greens. More and more people agreed, but they had today’s pressing problems to worry and live with. Let tomorrow’s generation do their own worrying – tomorrow. Interest waned.
All of this was of only passing concern to Eve but not to Hollywood. The name ‘Puffy’ caught their fancy and a starburst of low-budget flics soon made her a household name. Multimillion dollar productions followed. The explosive success of the films ‘Genesis I and II’ left no corner of America unaffected. Outside of the USA, it was seen as strictly Hollywood fiction and accepted as such.
With fame came endorsements which in one day’s time made Eve, and her agent, the aforementioned intern, millionaires overnight. Their connection, at that time at least, was strictly business; the intern’s focus being neatly split between medicine and money, assuming such a split actually exists.
For Eve, now Puffy, one bang was enough for a lifetime. Constant pregnancy, for that is what it was, came with an aversion to sexual encounter which effectively kept men at a distance. Her suitors found this doubly distressing because Puffy was a thoroughly delectable squeeze, and with all those millions as bonus; she was irresistible.
When India’s Bollywood came out with the super-blockbuster hit movie ‘Fountain of Youths’, it rocked America out of its complacency. Threatening calls and letters flooded Congress complaining about this latest outsourcing theft of an All-American product. “Do something they demanded; and do it now!”
The legislators reacted by enacting legislation which authorized the National Parks Service to draft civilians with critical park specialties, and Eve was bussed to Yellowstone. Eve and her intern agent had a long laugh at the crude kidnap attempt. Eve had not even finished the fitting for her Park Ranger maternity uniform when the law was declared null and void, an abridgement of Eve’s civil rights. Any first year law student could have brought down that act of piracy.
Laughter stopped, however when three-month pregnant Eve, and her children three, were ordered to report to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center at Bethesda, MD, for medical examination prior to induction into the US Navy. To make sure Eve got the message straight, a marine helicopter was sent to fetch and deliver her to the induction center.
Eve had no objection. She was as obediently patriotic as she was devoutly religious. The only request she had was for on-base nursery help with the three kids because they were becoming a handful. Others were not so compliant. The intern hired major legal representation, and the ACLU screamed murderous violation of the 4th Amendment, the ‘once upon a time’ constitutional guaranteed guarantor of ‘the right of the people to be secure in their person’, etc. The government didn’t have a hair of a chance of getting this latest gambit through the courts.
“Why the ruffling of feathers?” asked a Naval spokesman. “Eve is yours as soon as she returns from the Gulf.” Hands flew up. “No, not the Mex; the Arab one,” he said. “She is serving aboard the US Navy hospital ship ‘Comfort –T-AH-20” in the Gulf of Aden. He smiled; check mate – game.
Aboard the Comfort everything was ‘anything but’ for poor Eve. She was hooked up to every test the medical profession could find skin surface for anchorage. They checked everything outside and went deep inside with probes, cameras, Ninja scalpel-wielders and a variety of collection baskets and sponges. The docs took x-rays of every type and internal portraits in 3D. They snared samples of anything moving and removed patches of Eve’s inner liners.
Eve felt like Frankenstein’s daughter, helplessly strapped to a gurney with camera lights flashing continuously. It was cruel and she cried; cried for herself and for her babies which had been taken from her. She took it, lasted it out; she had no choice because she was a government prisoner, and there can be no more heartless monster than impersonal government bureaucracy.
Eve was overseas and well out of the reach of the US justice system. The military is a world unto itself, but it is not impregnable if taken by surprise; Pearl Harbor proved that. And that is what happened while the non-stop testing of Eve was taking place. Because, there was no plan to ever release Eve back into civilian life; not as long as she lived and breathed; and plans for induction of her children were secretly underway.
Things were looking dark for Eve and darker still for her kiddies. The docs were puzzled. There were sperm there, millions of the squirmmers. Many were dead and doing a down-tube stumble, but not all – not by a long shot. And this is the point where it got interesting. The tumblers were those which had been at the forefront, the battle line between uterus and fallopian fall back and out.
What those front line sperm were doing was splitting, amoeba-like with one half taking on life and energy and the other deflating, dying and falling back and away. They knew that was impossible; until now, that is, because there before their probes, big as life, they were seeing it happen over and over again. The average life of these male ‘Y’ chromosomes was eight days and five for the ‘X’ female. The improved sperm life span was a spectacular find, a Nobel hit, all by itself.
The question rose: is Eve’s body producing this phenomenon or is it a sperm mutation independent of the body, one which they found conveniently available. What the docs needed was to move to stage two, which was: transfer some of the splitters to other female receptacles. They were in process of doing this but with no success in the first trials. It wasn’t simply a mater of habitat – there were chemical questions apparently which needed to be solved.
With Eve shunted off to the Middle East, censored and ‘sanitized’, the modern, U-tube newsies, abhorring travel expense, soon turned their attention to current disasters and those who brought them about. Given enough time out of the headlines, Eve and her kiddies could have been forgotten completely.
What turned things around, got them going again actually, was the angry reaction of Reverend Ferris Faith to the government’s abduction, not induction, of Eve, child of two of his devoted congregation. On the question of government dirty works, he was understandingly critical; with respect to the parents, he was out of the loop.
Mom and dad had entered Reverend Faith’s congregation in what they felt was spectacular fashion. Each had donated five million dollars to the ministry. The money was a present from Eve to her folks, but they wanted nothing to do with the fornicator or her dirty spoils.
Things had not turned out as the parents expected. Reverend Faith was properly thankful and warmly welcomed the generous donors into his ministry. He promised, if they truly believed, they would be saved. Those were the exact same words he told every donor, large or small.
Parson Goodbook took a more parochial view when hammered by the news of the huge donation. Vehemently denouncing it from his pulpit, he described it as selfish ostentation, a sinful attempt to purchase salvation after having bred the Devil’s abortion, Eve. The congregation was in full agreement and unanimously voted both out of the church and their lives.
Mom and dad happily made the switch to TV, but they found it was not enough. Reverend Faith was out there in some air-wavy place floating above his millions of followers. Mom and dad felt lost; they couldn’t come to terms with that separation after a lifetime of bench-rubbing closeness, squeaking floors, the smell of lavender and the satisfying feel of hymnals.
They tried to make amends, but being broke, were repulsed. Continued life in Burleigh Corners meant living with neighbors who were once close, warm friends but now mean, vindictive enemies. They couldn’t take it, swallowed their pride and asked Satan’s daughter for another tenner. They flew off to Bimini but not before donating fifty thousand to each of Burleigh’s ten churches and five bucks to Parson Goodbook’s shack.
Those who knew Reverend Faith, and he was not a complex personality, were dismayed that he took so long before he gave voice to the Biblical ramifications of the ‘new’, this second Eve. The media wildly proclaimed her the forerunner and populator of a new Eden. How else explain the ‘miracle’?
Reverend Faith truly believed in God, his God, the Christian God, but so did a host of others, some perhaps even more so. What separated him from almost all others was that he did not believe in miracles. God did not work that way, he insisted, and thinking He did, only clouded what should be selfevident.
The physical world He created was a rational world; a look around should be enough to convince a person with any intelligence at all. Rain falls, hot air rises, but not always. Puzzles abound, but answers exist. All that is required is to invest the effort in searching for the discovery. His world; our world, is a physical construction, one of weights and measures, absolutes and certainties. Science, he preached, is not the enemy of faith; it is faith’s handmaiden.
It was for this reason that the Eve phenomenon, the consecutive, overlapping pregnancies, did not excite him. Those looking for miracles were wasting their time; of that he was positive. Pregnancy resulted from insemination, naturally or artificially introduced. The answer was there for the finding and should not be all that difficult to resolve.
Follow the sperm start to finish and the answer will be there, not by inventing a new and convenient magical interpretation out of Genesis. It wasn’t that simple, he knew, because he was logical and practical. He accepted that some things are hard to bring to light.
Reverend Faith was deeply involved in reading ‘Revelations’, and the Eve affair was an unwanted distraction. His ministry was being flooded with letters and calls asking he speak out. Finally, he relented and promised to say his say on Thanksgiving Day, working it in, so to speak, because to his view, it was nothing more than God doing His thing; surprising to us but not to Him because all things were by and of Him.
Outside developments happening two days prior to Thanksgiving Day caused him to discard his prepared sermon. The president announced the induction of Eve into the US Navy and gave his defense of the measure as one of national defense, the protection of our religious assets.
Where he dug up those words, only he and his staff knew. He was not known to be the most intelligent president ever but this was too much for Reverend Faith. He got mad. He stormed; had never been so angry in his life but now he vented his anger on any program which would have him.
The president tried to rephrase but only made matters worse by doubling the stupidity by calling it our ‘religious heritage’. Reverend Faith attacked the president and his ‘pet doggie’ Congress. How could they do such a patently immoral, unprincipled and unconstitutional thing as imprison a young woman and her tots? God only knows, what the laboratory ogres were doing to and with the young mother? “There is a too close resemblance between these un-American activities and those of Nazi Dr. Josef Mengele of Auschwitz infamy,” he declared.
The president stood firm, and insisted he would not be browbeaten by a TV minister, however popular. He held out for a short while, but waves of discontent were building an overpowering political storm. The Thanksgiving Day sermon, all two hours of it, dealt with separation of church and state. “What hypocrisy,” he stormed. “All well and good when it is the church ‘Biblifying’ the laws. How now when the roles are reversed? These actions cannot stand! They must be overturned or those insisting upon them removed from office.”
That last hit the spot, the only button equally vulnerable and sensitive to every politician. Eve’s national ‘assetness’ began to lose its glitter. Reverend Faith was not alone in his defense of Eve and her babies. Other loudly insistent voices, emotional western European voices, were taking up the cry for her release, and their motive was not altogether altruistic. What they feared was American domination.
I know, it seems silly now but you must understand the prevailing mentality back then when ‘Fortress Europe’ aimed at stopping the inflow of penniless immigrants, dark-shaded, non-Christian beggars polluting the ethnic solidarity of the EU.
The problem was birth rate, and it was double edged. The natives were happy to go childless; the arrivals thought children were the natural, unavoidable result of sex; the price one paid for the ride. Every projection showed that in fifty years, the natives would be in the minority in their homeland.
The solution was more babies, but for modern couples, the price of raising kids was too high. They were patriotic, would fight in wars, do their part for the environment; that and all the rest except play the role of parents.
Eve opened their eyes to a solution which no political, or medical for that matter, had ever imagined. It was manna, spelled ‘mama’, from heaven. The EU sent an embassy with a generous offer for Eve’s citizenship transfer to any EU state of her choice: mansion, full medical coverage and state-funded education through university for the kiddies; you name it. They would have added lifetime pension but Eve by that point could have bought Monaco without denting her folio.
The US response was one of highest dudgeon, spitting outrage and national indignation at the base presumption of the Europers that the US would stoop to selling one or any of its citizens. This was not an offer the EU was prepared to allow the US to refuse. They paroled Berlusconi along with a Sicilian team of female advisers to add beef and beauty to the negotiating team lineup.
Keep in mind that at no point were Eve’s wishes taken into consideration. Eve had enough trouble with English without wanting to complicate her life further by trying to learn ‘one of them others’. The talks did not exactly break down, but they did become vicious, especially after the US added the Chicago ‘Daly Bears’ squad to its lineup to offset the Torentos.
Aspersions have been cast upon the intern for what followed, but that is always the way of things is it not? Sincere, altruistic motivation, in retrospect, is turned upside-downside, inside-outside and chewed to pieces. Sweet and kind as Eve was, she lacked the smarts which education provides. The intern, as we have seen, had both.
In response to the world’s growing insistence and UN demands, the US, ungraciously to say the least, discharged Eve for ‘fraudulent enlistment’ claiming perjured data on her induction form. She was not a high school grad but had checked the ‘YES’ block. “So what; who cares?” said Eve. She was happy at the release until word reached her that she was now a ‘convicted’ felon and as such forfeited her civil rights and could no longer pack that cute little, pearl-handled Derringer.
Upon returning home Eve was in bad shape physically and emotionally. She needed tender loving care, and the intern considerately and unselfishly stepped in to fill that desperate need. He moved her and the kids, their total now standing at five, into the Burleigh Corners Clinic where they took occupancy of the top floor. Their close business relationship gradually flowed over the line from comradely affection to love.
The world outside and about their clinic nest was negotiating Eve’s fate, but the two love birds remained unaware. Keep in mind that their love was Shakespearean deep but Platonic high. There was no consummation of the act, no exercise of prerogatives as per marital contract.
It was not that the intern was disinclined; far from it. He had the hots for his bride. She still was, as earlier described, one delectable dish. It was driving him crazy being in such reachable touch during the daylight hours and unavoidable physically bumpity-bump in bed. Impossible dream, unreachable star, as Elvis so eloquently sang it; so also did the intern so torturously live it. Having all those drooling, soiling, ankle-biting rug rats around was no help either.
World demands grew more insistent and became threatening. The US must, they insisted, pass out research samples of Eve’s private sperm supply. Why so generous with the moon rocks and now the miser with a few wigglers out of millions? There was pressure on the intern as you have seen; pressure from government, from the religionists; from the bribing unscrupulous but mostly from his clear conscience.
On top of all that outside interference, there was his need for a normal relationship with the woman he loved. No matter where he looked or turned, there was no window of hope; normality was and would be forever out of reach as long as Eve housed that reservoir of perpetually perpetuating ‘zoa’.
Yes, that is how he saw the spermatozoa; disgusting, toothy, serpent-tailed animals is how he viewed them, and he hated how they separated him from his happiness. To him they were ‘evil’, a thing to be despised, a festering boil, and a nest of vipers. Keep his suffering in mind when you judge him. A thoroughly good man, he was falsely condemned because his motives were misconstrued.
Eve was discharged, and no question in the intern’s mind, intentionally given a dishonorable discharge so that she would be kept under government control. She was given an agreement to sign upon discharge that, acceding to certain conditions, her discharge would be periodically reevaluated. Becoming a felon, as you must sympathize, was a devastating development for Eve; already physically weak, and emotionally drained, it broke her will, and she signed.
The agreement gave the government ‘harvesting rights’. Yes, awful as it sounds, it was far more distressing in practice; vulgar, abusive and dehumanizing. They made her feel like a stud farm mare or, worse, acreage whose mineral rights were government confiscated. Helpless, mortified; she cried for hours on end.
The intern could not simply stand by and let the situation roll on and on without some relief; an end in sight was necessary, any end, so he did what he had to do; what you would have done. “What the Ellsberg’s did when they gave US atomic secrets to the Ruskies!” That’s what the papers screamed, and the justice department was all over the poor innocent.
It came about this way. The intern, as we have seen, was no dummy. He set the medics up by complaining, as Eve’s husband, that they were embarrassing his wife in the manner of their collecting the periodic sperm crop. The apparatus used was uncomfortable for Eve and, in the hands of a new operator, sometimes painful. He offered to do the collecting but was refused.
He became insistent, so forcefully demanding and obstructionist that they were left with no choice but to let him have his way. He did the job without military complaint; shipped the specified number of spermers to the Walter Reed and an equal amount to any foreign taker through an Albanian network he had uncovered. The foreign middleman search was dangerous, and to government eyes, ‘subversive’, but cash did it. The Albanian connection is what caused the intern the most agony in attempting to prove his innocent intentions. “Why employ Moslems?” was the question. The answer was too simple to be accepted by the suspicious investigators. “Because,” explained the intern, “only they would accept dollars in payment.” They claimed to love America and felt especially indebted for US help in separating Kosovo from the Serbs.
The intern was charged with sedition, grand larceny, trading with the enemy, smuggling and copyright infringement, and although not brought to trial, it ended with a sour taste all around. There was no statute with enough jagged edges upon which to impale the intern. Eve was a free citizen after all. He was let off with a stern warning.
No question in his mind that the case against him was not forgotten but placed on the back burner, there to simmer. Things went back to truce-normal until that day, that frigid, day before Christmas; that “Day of Infamy” the papers all proclaimed; that day when the bucket came out of the well empty followed by the cry “sabotage, villainy, spermaticide!”
Completely unwarranted prejudgment hate and suspicion fried the intern. This time the burner was turned to max because billions of pharmaceutical and matching government grant dollars were invested in experiments which were now jeopardized. Other ‘sperm-bodyfarm’ tests were still inconclusive because the sperm transplants refused to adjust to the new environment provided. Like fresh water fish dumped into the Atlantic, they quickly died rather than acclimate.
Having the justice department after his hide was bad; the pill makers wanting his heart put him on antidepressants and made his hair fall out in clumps. Things got exciting when mobs bussed into Burleigh Corners and demonstrators railed for and against around the clinic. Sheriff Tate and wife, deputy Hester, were hard put to keep order. There was more grass being smoked than stepped on.
Two things happened which brought the crowd and the world to their senses. Reports from everywhere on Eve-sperm survivors, as tallied by CNN, were reported down to one hundred thousand; a week later, fifty thousand; and a big, one-day drop to one or two probables – and then zero. CNN, with its short attention span, switched to Rolex, yacht and Dubai golf Christmas bargains.
The world was once more back to where it was before. Reverend Faith drew his largest Christmas Day audience ever, and although he had every reason to crow; he did not. He did what he always did which was to pass on his message. “Miracles,” he said, “are mirages, crutches for the lame of faith. Having firmly held faith, nothing of the physical world should distract you. If something does, look to your faith – therein find the weakness.
“Miracles,” he repeated. “There are none in God’s kingdom save one, and that one is, God Bless, overwhelmingly powerful. Feel it; live the beauty of it.
“Love is the only miracle; God’s supreme gift to mankind; look no further.
“Amen.”
End
Copyright 2011 Charles Sarlanis
charles_sarlanis@yahoo.com
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