Crimson Reborn Ch. 11

Eric climbed out of his truck in the wholesaler yard. Several other farmers were drifting between stacks of feed and fertilizer making broad gestures while telling bad jokes. Normally, Eric would have joined them. Getting away from the farm was a rare opportunity and it was his habit to find enjoyment in it wherever he could. But today was a little different. He couldn't exactly put his finger on what was different about it, but a few things just seemed off.

First, he'd felt strange since breakfast. By the second hour of his drive, he'd become convinced that something in the breakfast had been spoiled or contaminated. Maybe the eggs or the milk. Second was the damn weather. He followed the weather forecasts like a near sociopath. As a kid, he'd been blindsided by a storm that cost him three cattle. Damn things were too dumb to climb out of a ditch when it started to flood. In the wind and rain, he'd overlooked them while his dad was rounding up all the rest. They found them the next morning and his father had been none too pleased. Since then, he'd tracked the weather through any way he could, even keeping his own yearly calendars.

But the past couple of weeks had been wrong. Measurably wrong. The temperature gauges all around the farm read correctly, but when it said sixty and felt eighty that was outright wrong. He'd called around a little to ask if other folks had been experiencing something similar, wondering if somehow all his measuring equipment had gone off. But everyone reported the same thing and then wrote it off as a clear sky with a hot sun. The radio, the TV, and the Internet never gave much particular attention to Small Creek, but they covered the region well enough. Not one outlet mentioned a bizarre heat wave in the smallest sliver of their viewership. He mentioned it to Nancy, but she had the same quick dismissive attitude as everyone else. So what if it's warm? It's Small Creek, wait ten minutes and the weather will change. Except it wasn't changing.

Eric grabbed his folders out of the cab and headed inside. He waved to the various workers, but none of them acknowledged him. Odd, but not unusual. They often had hard mornings unloading trucks. Eric didn't have a hard time sympathizing with an ill humor after a hard morning's work. He made his way through the warehouse to the desks at the far side. Mike Johnson had been his contact at the wholesaler for fifteen years. The overweight man was sitting at his desk as he always was, having his fifteenth cup of coffee for the day. The ancient computer on his desk cast a pale glow on his pallid face which didn't move as Eric approached. "Alright then, Mike?" Eric offered in greeting.

At first, Mike didn't respond. His eyes flicked away from the screen, but didn't settle on Eric. The man seemed to look right through Eric, sending a chill through the dairy farmer unlike anything he'd ever experienced. After a few seconds, Mike's eyes focused, "Oh hell, Eric. Sorry, must have been half asleep or something. Could have sworn you weren't even there. Come on, have a seat here." Mike shifted his bulk to sit a little more forward, causing his chair to groan and squeak. "We had an appointment, didn't we?"

"Sure did, Mike, same as usual. You feeling alright?" Eric half expected the man to drop dead and no one notice.

"I'm alright, yeah. Felt pretty good today, actually. Most days, I don't. Cold gets to my joints. Stack all the damn heaters you want in this place, its still damn cold all the time. Let me get ya pulled up here." Mike's fingers squashed into the keyboard, and the two of them set into a mundane discussion about quantities and prices and dates. Constantly, though, Mike would drift off. His eyes would go slack and, though he refused to acknowledge it, he seemed to forget that anyone was with him at all. "Sorry, say that again," punctuated the end of half of Eric's conversation. In the end, Eric found that writing things down helped. As they wrapped up, Mike drew a look of hard concentration on his face, lowered his head across the desk and gestured for Eric to do the same. Before Eric could react, the man's hand reached out and palmed the side of Eric's face. "Christ, you're there," Mike spluttered, leaning back.

"The hell are you on about, Mike? You damn hand is sweaty."

The relief that had graced Mike's face faded quickly. His eyes narrowed and he spoke sternly, "I ain't going crazy, that's what. You're there. I know you're there. I felt you with my own hand. You handed me this paper."

"Mike, you're worrying me. What's the matter with you? Course I'm here."

"Cept you're not. Not the whole time. I may be old and on too much coffee and chasing away a hangover, but I still have my sense. I ain't gonna stop looking at you because the second I do, you'll flicker away. Just like you've done the whole time we've been talking. You're just gone and I can't remember nothing about you till I concentrate and see you again. I ain't got no other way of explaining it."

"Look here, Mike," Eric said as he stood up. "I don't know what kind of gag you're playing, but I ain't in the mood for it. You got my orders down, don't you? We're on the up and up with the paperwork? Good. Then I'll expect my deliveries on schedule and the next time I come, I'd appreciate you sparing me the nonsense. In the meantime, maybe get off your fat ass and go to a damn doctor. Cause I ain't 'flickering.'" The anger drained out of him as Mike looked away and back again. That cold stare right through Eric caused his heart to thump up into his throat. Mike's eyes refocused and he shook his head. Then, with a new determination, Mike looked away. He didn't look back.

Eric grabbed his paperwork from the desk. He stormed away, bumping into one of the workers, but the man didn't apologize or yell or anything. He simply staggered slightly, went blank for a moment, then went back to his work. Eric ran back to his truck, threw himself into it, and slammed the door. His eyes watched for someone to notice, but no one did. Flustered and panicking, he slammed his hand down on his truck's horn, sending a cutting note throughout the warehouse yard. No one looked. No one stopped their task. Conversations went on without interruption. "What the fuck?"

He cranked the truck and peeled out of the lot.

***

The drive back to Small Creek did nothing to improve Eric's mood. He tried calling ahead to check in with Nancy, and also to affirm his own sanity, but it went straight to voice mail. That don't mean anything. She spends whole days out of the house without her phone on her. Would forget her ass if it wasn't stuck on her. And Emily, well, she's supposed to be out looking for the fence. We get shit coverage at the house, let alone off in the far pasture. Still, ain't like her not to go in for lunch. She'd see the missed calls then. One hand on the steering wheel, he thumbed through his phone, debating whether or not calling someone else would be giving in to his paranoia. Too much of his life had been spent as the butt of everyone's jokes, specially those people in Small Creek who liked to gossip. They'd love to catch wind of a weird phone call from Eric Swanson asking if he was real. Ol' Humphrey won't think anything of it, gossiper or not.

He pressed the button to call the local bar and let it ring, his other hand sweating on the steering wheel. Other cars seemed to acknowledge him, at least, but it was a small comfort knowing that his truck was real if not himself. "Spanish Moss," came the drawl from the other end of the line.

"Humphrey, that you?"

"Ayup, who's this?"

"This is Eric Swanson. I was uh..." Shit. What the hell am I calling about. "Uh...well, Humphrey I was wondering if you'd seen Emily today. She went off this morning and now we can't get ahold of her."

The man at the other end of the line let out something akin to a bored groan. Eric heard the sound of a door open and then the low roar of conversations. "Naw, she ain't here. Not anywhere I see, at least. Think she's gone into some kind of trouble? I can't imagine you calling me looking for your daughter was at the top of the list."

"Oh, no, no. Nothing like that. Her phone is just not working and, well, you know how it is these days. Without the cell phone, we don't know exactly how to find her. Your place was the only thing I knew off the top of my head that still had a land line. Say, Humphrey, while I've got you on the line, how long you and I known one another?"

Humphrey didn't respond until the door sound happened again. "Forty years, or more," he said, slowly. "Things alright, Eric? How's Nancy?" It was the same low drawl, but a note of suspicion had seeped into it.

"We're fine. Everything's fine. I know I'm sounding a little crazy, but...it's the heat, I think. I was over at the wholesaler this morning and it's ten degrees cooler not a hundred miles away. That's weird right." For the first time in weeks, he had an ear that would listen to him, even if Humphrey thought he was insane. That morning he'd been accused of flickering, what the hell ever that meant, but now he had someone who was rapt with attention. Possibly because he suspected Eric of something horrible happening with the Swanson family, but at least he was listening. "You noticed the temperature? It's wrong. Everything's damned wrong. It shouldn't be this hot. Shouldn't. And not one person wants to talk about it. Not even me, not really. It almost hurts to think about it too much, but by god that's not going to stop me. Maybe I am going nuts. My old man went nuts at the end, you know. You remember, course you do. Cause that's what you do Humphrey, you remember stuff. So in forty years, do you ever remember it being like this. Whatever this is. The temperature. The way people talk, all the people of Small Creek. The way we all just keep drifting off from one minute to the next as if it were normal to not have a cloud in the sky for three straight weeks despite every weatherman and radar saying they should be —"

He cut himself off and waited. Eric could hear Humphrey's slow breath on the other end of the line. The phone shifted against the other man's face causing a rattle of static as the receiver brushed his stubble. "I think you might be on to something there, Eric," Humphrey said. "But I ain't got the first idea of what. And even if I had an idea or you had an idea, what would we do about it? Government controlling the weather? CIA dumping chemicals in the water to make us forget? I've been thinking on it, too, so you ain't alone. Me and Oliver shoot the shit about it every day. He thinks I'm nuts, and I think he's too twitterpated to see the forest for the trees. But it comes round again, what're you going to do about it? Don't nobody care about us. Maybe we're just old and starting to notice how much everyone else wants to forget we're around."

"This ain't a mid-life crisis, Humphrey its —"

"I know. I know it. Listen, you take a breather on it for a while. Come on down to the bar this week. See for yourself what's going on in town. Then uh..." The line filled with static and then a sharp hiss. "...go on then, what'll you have?"

Eric's throat went dry. "Humphrey?"

"Yup, what'll you have. Special tonight is beef steak on rice. Come on with it, less you don't want me to actually cook it."

"Humphrey we were just talking. It's Eric. Eric Swanson. The heck is a matter with you?"

"Listen buddy, I don't know an Eric Swanson. And I don't take kindly to fuckers wasting my time."

"Wait, no! Don't hang up. Swanson, like the Swanson Dairy farm, you know that don't you?"

"Sober up and call back. Only dairy we have around here is the one owned by Cain Wilson." Humphrey slammed down the receiver and the line went dead.

Eric threw his phone across the cab of his truck. He pushed the pedal to the floor and hurried toward home.

***

Pulling up to his dairy, nothing seemed wrong. He parked the truck at the house and went inside, calling out for Nancy or Emily. No one answered. He made his way through the house. Everything was off and dark, the sun mostly set on the horizon. He found Nancy's phone with his dozen missed calls sitting on the kitchen counter, in the exact spot where he'd seen her leave it that morning. Of his daughter, there was no sign at all. He would have made his way down to the milk house right then, but Eric was convinced that he could hear music from somewhere inside the house. In the kitchen, he thought it was coming from Emily's room upstairs. When he checked her computer and the small radio clock she kept as an alarm, neither were making a sound, but then he heard the same song coming from his own bedroom. It was a pleasant voice singing. Despite his hectic, terrifying day, it soothed him while he searched for it. He only stopped when throwing towels out of a linen closet at the end of the hall, he noticed Samson, Emily's horse standing in the backyard munching on Nancy's flowerbeds. Jaw agape, he ignored the music and went to see if he could find any clue on the loose horse.

As he stepped out the back door, though, he saw the milk house. The lights were on inside, but they weren't the austere lamps of a sterile milking facility. Instead, warm golden light flooded out of the door windows, falling on the truck parked right beside the door. Cain's truck, exactly where it had been yesterday evening. For that matter, hadn't it been there this morning. Didn't I look right at it when I was getting ready to leave. Why didn't I go speak with him? Why didn't I check on him being there so early? Flickering came to mind again as well as a good deal of anger. Cain Wilson's Dairy my hairy ass. I'll get to the bottom of whatever joke this is right now. He forgot about Samson and made his way down to the building.

Approaching the door, the song grew stronger. By then, Eric was convinced that it was in his head. Madness didn't matter to him any more though. He wanted to do something and if that meant throwing a punch at Cain, then so be it. He didn't notice the note in the song begin to change, becoming less welcoming and more sinister. He grabbed the door handle of the milk house. It was warm and holding it in his hand filled him with a sense of complete dread. In a moment, unlike any moment he'd ever experienced before, he understood what a gut feeling was. He'd thought he'd had one when he met Nancy. He thought he'd been in love. No, it was affection and tolerance, but not love. Then, when he'd had his daughter and held her for the first time. He'd expected to pick her up and experience an immediate and perfect bond. For years, Eric told himself and anyone who would listen that it had happened. But, no. Again, it had been love, acceptance, and tolerance, but not a movement of his soul. Yet, placing his hand on that door sent a jolt through him that shifted his view of his entire life. A pure and immutable dread washed over him. Whatever lied beyond was best left unseen.

His hand jerked away. He staggered back, feeling the blood drain out of his face as his skin went cold. Flickering, almost gone. Like a candle losing oxygen. Eric knew several things at that moment. How he knew them, he didn't understand. If he had taken time to ruminate on that part of the problem, he might have likened it to knowing one's parents. It was simply something that had always been, yet only realized once. He knew that his wife, his daughter, and Cain were inside the milk house. He knew that a woman named Lucy, who in his small mind could only be likened to a succubus from the horror tales of religion, had somehow seized power over his dairy and given it to Cain. He knew that if he ran, nothing would stop him. He could escape and forget his life in Small Creek completely. Or, he could go into the milk house, confront Cain, and likely suffer at the demoness's whim.

Flickering. Eric wiped his hand on his shirt, stepped forward, and opened the door.

His eyes took a minute to adjust to the warm light. He heard the familiar whirring of the pumps, but otherwise he recognized nothing about the interior. The stalls meant for cows had been changed into assemblies of cushioned pedestals and gleaming chrome racks. At the far end of the room, two massive cisterns stood on either side of a large throne. The throne was empty, but its owner was not absent. Eric recognized Cain's face, but nothing else. He was naked, standing behind one of the stalls on the row opposite the one Eric chose to walk down. He wanted to keep some distance between himself and the monster Cain had become. He'd liked Cain and thought the man to be honest and hard working, but now he felt only contempt for the thing assuming dominion over his property. Cain didn't look up from his task as Eric approached. Whatever bravery Eric had mustered flitted away as he realized the true size of his former farmhand. Cain was nearly eight feet tall with a body built like a tree trunk. The sight of it caused Eric's insides to coil and writhe, but not nearly so much as what he saw when he reached the end of the row.

Bent over in the stall was a creature that Eric wished he didn't recognize. "Nancy?" he said in a ragged whisper.

The hucow's eyes focused for a moment, but the sudden movement of her head caused a long stream of drool to pour from her lip. She smiled at her husband, then softly mooed. Cain was behind her, his cock slipping in and out of her with ease as his hands groped her enormous ass. Furious and confused, Eric couldn't help but be aroused at the sight. They were both massive and creatures of pure sex. His horror couldn't suppress the bulge in his pants or his urge to touch himself. It pressed at his mind as he watched Cain fuck his wife, almost as an ultimatum to keep his sanity. Eric unbuttoned his pants and grabbed his dick, stroking it in rhythm with Cain's thrusts.

Until then, Cain had paid no notice to the newcomer, but the movement attracted attention. Cain leaned forward and gave Nancy's teats a hard slap, leaving a red hand print on the white flesh as milk continued to pump out through the tubing. "I think, she will always be my favorite cow. We didn't know if you'd come home, Eric. I'm glad you did. I've heard such awful things about you." Cain didn't stop his motion, nor did he seem to even notice what he was doing. Eric, on the other hand, was finding it harder and harder to maintain his erection. His lust clogged his senses and he desperately wanted to jerk himself off, yet he couldn't.

"What've you done to her, you bastard," he said, limply. Even with the half soft cock in his hand, he kept stroking in vain. His body felt off and he worried he might actually disappear from existence.

"I set her free," Cain said. His hand slapped Nancy's flank, sending a ripple through her voluminous flesh. She grunted and shifted her ass from side to side. "She begged for this. She begged to become my cow. A toy that I can fuck when I please. It's remarkable, really. Before you showed up, she was contently waiting in her stall ass up and pussy soaking wet. All I had to do was walk up behind her and push my dick into her sopping cunt. She cums hard when I start and harder when I finish. Which, I suppose..." His face screwed up in contemplation and his pace quickened. He became a near blur as he slammed into the back of Eric's wife. Nancy began to moo erratically, her hands gripping the bars at her side as her milk dugs flopped back and forth, gushes of creamy fluid pouring into the attached cups. Cain slammed completely inside of her and grunted.

Nancy giggled dumbly between moos, looked at her husband, and managed to say, "He cummy in moooooo."

Eric's face contorted in a mix of pain and pleasure as a faint orgasmic feeling hit him. His hand had nearly rubbed his cock raw, but a small drop of semen worked its way out of him, falling on his pants. The need didn't dissipate, though, and he tried to rub himself again in desperation. Cain pulled out of Nancy with a wet slurp, his cock still oozing cum that fell to the ground in big dollops. He gave Nancy one final affection pat on the rump and made his way to the throne. Taking his seat, he cocked his head to the side and waited. Eric wanted to grab something and charge the oversized man, but felt smaller and less there by the second. "Flickering," Cain said, a sadistic laugh on his face. "Almost gone. You need something to hold you here. Or something to make you leave. What about your daughter?"