God's Little Miscarriage - Part One

Joe discovered the big green fetus beached on the edge of a small, heart-shaped lake in the littered thicket behind Fontaine’s Shopping Centre. It was the size of a Saint Bernard, glowing with a green haze. It was obviously dead (or possibly dormant? Best not to think about that...).
      
A thin drizzle settled like poison over the trash-strewn woods. It was a cold, misty morning. The sky was a sagging gray tarp. Fog disguised the landscape. Joe, who had been picking through the Dumpsters behind the buildings, was heading home. The Dumpsters gifted him with nothing. Aside from a few crushed soda cans, they were bankrupt; spewing worthless paper and rotted garbage. Nothing he could pawn or use or eat.

     
He approached the giant glowing fetus warily, his heart pounding with arrhythmic fury in his chest. By God, it looked human. Joe felt too old for this kind of macabre shock. His ordinary life was grotesque enough. He reached down and brought up a muddy, broken crutch. He held it like a lance, moving closer until the thing’s full, monstrous details emerged.

     
Its eyes were black and open. It was swathed in a gelatinous coating of green slime and emitted a dim glow. Its huge, awkward head was pale, bulbous, and running with a tangled network of purple blood vessels. It was posed like a pugilist, its bony back hunched, hands curled into fists. It had ten tiny fingernails. Joe could make out the hazy shapes of dormant organs under the glossy, opaque flesh. It was also male, he saw.

     
He wondered where the hell it might have come from. It looked ancient, primordial, and possessed a power that traveled through time. But there was also something vaguely familiar about it, as if it had slipped loose from a damaged dream.

     
He poked the giant fetus with the crutch, prodding it like a curious kid and for a split-second he thought it moved and he almost screamed and took off running.

   
But no, it was still dead. He poked it again, feeling resistance in the meaty mass. The drizzle had turned to light rain, transforming the gray lake into millions of ripples. Joe wiped moisture from his thick gray beard and thought about how he was going to get the thing home.

     
The idea of taking it just occurred to him—popped into his hungover head. He didn’t wonder why. It was just another thing he needed. He didn’t want the empty day to be a total loss.

     
He dropped the crutch and placed both hands on the monster. It was cold and wet and dead. It smelled like sulfur and rotted beef.  He tested it by gently pushing against it and was surprised at how easily it rocked back. The thing looked heavy as a bull, but it was light, as if composed of nothing more than faded contours and empty air. Joe looked around to make sure he wasn’t being watched and then embraced the thing with both arms. He lifted it, guessing it weighed around a hundred pounds. He held it like a bridegroom holding a bride and took a few hesitant steps. The rain increased. He headed back to his shack hidden deep in the woods. He carried the thing easily, across two pathless miles. He walked over wet leaves and rocks and roots yet his sneakers never slipped. He didn’t falter or pause or stumble. It was as if he held a guardian angel in his outstretched arms.

     
He made it back to his home; a jumbled shack he’d hammered together from discarded debris. He was a scavenger par excellence. He carried the thing inside.

     
He set about lighting his lantern and then stopped when he realized that the thing gave off enough illumination to light the room. He sat on his mattress to admire it. For the first time he wondered if it might be valuable. Maybe he could sell it to some sideshow impresario. It was a freak of nature, like a three-headed mule. People liked stuff like that. Whatever it was, it was important. Like a space alien or a sea monster or a god. God’s holy miscarriage.

     
His discovery might make him famous. Or at least get his name in the news. He imagined himself showing the thing off on The Today Show. It was better than a yeti.

     
He removed his cap and saw that it was full of his coarse white hair.

     
What the hell?

     
He reached up and brushed his hand across his scalp, coming away with a fistful of clumps. He tugged his beard, likewise filling his hand with hair. He moaned and felt his teeth suddenly loosen and move. He spit a tooth to the floor. And then another. And another until he was staring down at nine dead teeth. He slid his tongue over slick empty gums.

     
He began to panic.

     
The thing in front of him seemed to glow more brightly. Was the damn thing radioactive? Was it killing him? Leaching away his energies? He looked at his trembling hands. His fingernails had abandoned their anchors and began to slip off the ends of his fingers. He shook his hands and the nails clicked into the pile of teeth on the floor. God, he was falling apart. His eyesight dimmed.

     
A heavy weakness stole over Joe and he fell back on the mattress. He could feel his muscles atrophy and dissolve. He felt his bones settle into themselves and then crack and fracture and wither away.

     
And then he felt nothing at all.

     
The glowing thing quivered and blinked. Its huge heart stammered to life.

     
Another one.