Free The Haunted Vagina by Iii Carlton Mellick

short snooze. Fig’s cinnamon hair in my face, her drool on my chest. We’re hardly able to both fit on the kid’s bed, but we’re so twisted around each other that neither of us are in danger of falling off. I un-pretzel myself and slip out of the room, through the chainmail curtains onto the balcony. The warmth of the bright pink sky glazes my face.
    This place isn’t a ghost world, just a beaten down lonely world. It must have been around for centuries, getting passed from host to host, mother to daughter, generation after generation. I can’t even begin to imagine how this place was even created. Perhaps it was created by some kind of cosmic accident. Perhaps it was bio-engineered by some kind of Asian Frankenstein. Or perhaps it’s some sort of evolutionary mutation. Perhaps, a long time ago, in Asia, where Stacy was born, there was a village that had too many people but not enough food. Perhaps this situation went on for so long that evolution had to step in and do something about it. Perhaps a few mutant females were born, each containing fertile worlds inside of them. Worlds that many of the villagers could move into. Worlds where its occupants wouldn’t need food or water. Worlds that could sustain several villages. All that would be needed is to feed and protect the female hosts of the worlds.
    I look out to the blackened houses down the road. Fig called it “the cancer.” Perhaps Stacy’s mother had a disease that spread through her body, destroying her insides as well as the world within her. Perhaps she passed the world onto Stacy and gave birth to her before the cancer could destroy the entire world. Perhaps her mother died of the disease before she had the chance to tell Stacy about the secret place hidden in her belly. When she was adopted by her American parents and brought to California, Stacy was forever cut off from the truth. That is, if anyone still knows the truth.
    I’m pretty sure that the world was created so long ago that nobody really knows the truth anymore. Even the inhabitants of this world. After so many generations, the truth has probably been twisted, turned into myth. These people have been detached from the outside world for so long that they probably doubt it even exists. They probably know as much about it as we know of Heaven.
    “I’m going to miss them,” Fig says, stepping onto the balcony behind me.
    She’s looking at the sky. I think she’s talking about the clouds. She had names for all of them. She talks about them as if they were real people.
    “They were my friends,” she says, a tear on her cheek.
    I wrap my arms around her. I don’t know why. It’s ridiculous that she’s crying over the loss of some clouds, but in a way I guess it’s kind of cute.
    “You’re here, though,” she says. “You’re better.”
    I wipe her cheek with my thumb. It makes a sound like a windshield wiper.
    “You love me back,” she says.
    I freeze at the word love and step away from her. “I never said I love you. We hardly know each other.”
    “But you changed for me,” she says, petting my slimy horns, touching my skin. “You’re mine.”
    “I didn’t want to change,” I say. “It just happened.”
    “It happened because you belong to me.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

    Fig and I get married, eventually.
    I’m in love with her now. Maybe even more than I ever loved Stacy. Her crackling voice drives me wild. Her big cartoon eyes entrap me for hours.
    “It was written,” Fig’s mom says, in her language, watching us as we move into the south wing of the mansion together. A long abandoned section that we are fixing into our home.
    My mother-in-law’s language is Thai, or some kind of language that has evolved from Thai. I’ve been trying to learn it, but it’ll take time before I can speak fluently. Fig tries to teach it to me but her attention rarely stays focused on one project long enough to accomplish anything. I’m not sure where she learned English. At first, I