Chapter Ten

"But your victory didn't exactly last, now did it?"

 

What the fuck.

Gina stood before a trash can full of blood and gore. Lumps of flesh, mysterious fluids, tubes of skin.

“C-Callana,” she said, “w-wh-what—what did… oh, oh no, am—am I?”

Slumping over against the wall, she suddenly became aware of the crowd of customers staring at her from across the room.

“Congratulations!” Callana said joyfully.

Gina blinked, turning back toward the bizarre girl behind her. “C-congratulations?” she asked. “D-did I just give birth?”

“What? No, I fixed you.”

Rog lumbered out from the kitchen, then gaped in horror at all the blood dribbling down Gina’s chin. “Oh, Brovar’s ashes, Gina! Are—should I call an ambulance or something?”

“What?” Callana said.

“I—Callana,” Gina said, rushing over and grabbing the girl by her shoulders. “What did you do to me?”

Cocking her head, Callana said, “F-fixed you? I don’t understand, is the Gina angry?”

“Hold on,” Rog said. “What’s going on? Is this a prank or something?”

“N-no, Rog,” Gina said, desperate to take control of the situation. “I’m sorry, I think I’m coming down with something. I—I’ll take out the trash, everything’s fine.”

Rog mumbled something under his breath, baffled. “Okay, but—uh, I can’t have you taking the rest of this shift if you’re gonna be throwing up like that. Legally. Could get in trouble. And nobody wants a sick waitress, so I guess, uh, take the rest of the day off and we’ll see if you’re still sick tomorrow.”

Shaking her head, Gina took a few deep breaths. “Yeah, thanks, Rog. Don’t worry about me.”

She slipped the trash bag out of the bin, making sure no one saw how much blood there was, and she rushed out the door. Callana tailed her, her head perpetually cocked. After slinging the bag into the dumpster out back, Gina grabbed Callana’s hand, rushed her out to the car, and sat her down in the passenger seat.

“What the fuck was that, Callana?” she asked, hollering at the girl.

“I—”

“You ‘fixed’ me, yeah, I know. What the h—I… fuck…” Gina leaned back in her chair, pulled up the reclining lever, and laid all the way down. “What the fuck did you do to me?”

“The Gina said she had to make money to live, and she said the bottles cost money, so she was hurting herself to help me. I had to help—"

“You know I didn’t buy the bottles, right?” Gina groaned, clapping her hands over her eyes.

“W-what?”

“Callana. Honey. I found them in the recycling bin. People aren’t buying the bottles for the sake of the bottles. People don’t eat glass. They buy a bottle of beer for the beer, and then they throw the bottle away. I wasn’t killing myself so you could have bottles, I was trying to keep you from eating all the glass in my house!”

“Hmm. I did not know that.”

The two stared at each other.

"So that's it?" Gina asked. "The fuck, Callana? You wanted to help, and to do that, you made me vomit up, what, all my internal organs?”

Callana lowered her eyes. “I forgot to put them in your belly. I am sorry.”

Gina gaped. "Then what do I have in my belly?"

"A... the Clenard called it a black hole, I think?"

For a moment, Gina considered calling bullshit. Then, she remembered just how much blood she'd vomited up. Nope. No, no, if Callana said she had a black hole for a stomach, she supposed she had a black hole for a stomach. Her mom was right, after all. She leaned her head against the steering wheel, not caring when the car let out a long, ear-piercing honk right there in the restaurant's parking lot. Callana flinched at the noise, but she didn't say anything. She just sat there, her shoulders low, her eyes darting left and right.

Oh. Callana probably still had no idea she'd done anything wrong.

Gina considered that thought for a moment. 

Then, she screamed at the top of her lungs.

Time passed. Gina wasn't sure how long she'd sat there, weeping all over the dashboard while Callana cocked her head in a strange combination of shame and curiosity.

Figuring she'd taken long enough for now, Gina wiped her eyes and stared at the god beside her.

"Why?" she asked, her voice low.

"Why?" Callana asked, cringing.

"Why did you do this to me? What did you do to me? I don't even know what's... what's going on or what I'm supposed to do or think. You can't just change someone without their permission. You can't do that! That's so fucked up, Callana! And in the middle of my shift—I—how am I gonna make rent this month if I can't get a full day's work in? I need money, Callana, I'm broke! I'm absolutely broke, and even if I've got a black hole for a stomach or whatever—however that even works—I still need a place to live, fuel for my car, insurance in case I get hurt—"

"You won't get hurt," Callana blurted.

"W-what?" Gina asked. "Hold on, okay—I cut you off before. I'm sorry. Please. Explain what you did to me. In detail."

"Okay. Yes. Okay," Callana said, flushing. "Well, I looked at your body and saw it was losing energy, and all the little pieces of you—they are small, what are they called?"

"Cells? Atoms? Shit—okay, uh, cells are little microscopic pieces of people that make you... be alive and stuff. Atoms are, like, the building blocks of nature or something like that. I think."

"Yes! Cells. They die quickly, and when they make new copies of themselves, they do it wrong and bad, and they get worse each time. And they need the food to do anything, and that was not good, because you need money for the food, so I made you not need to get the money anymore. Except for the car, and the  'rent,' I think. I do not know what that is, but it does not sound related..." 

“Brovar—I didn’t… okay. Fuck. How, exactly, did you make it so I don’t need money anymore?”

“Oh! I made it so you do not need the food, and you do not have to die!”

Gina sat back. “What.”

“Yes! The food is not necessary anymore.”

“What? How? That doesn’t make sense. What do I eat, now?”

“Nothing?” Callana said. “If you want the food, you could eat some, I guess. You could eat anything now. Even bottles! You should try some. They are good!”

Gina closed her eyes, leaning back in her still-reclined seat.

Oh, dear Brovar, she thought, I know I haven’t prayed to you in a long, long time. And I know I haven’t believed in you, either, but I need help. If you can forgive me, I promise I’ll pray more. Please, please, please give me patience.

“And your cells, too,” Callana said, looking away. Clearly she sensed at least some of the tension, even as it rapidly faded from Gina as her mind settled into quiet, dull, and dead sort of acceptance. "I stopped them from getting old. And I gave you tentacles, so you can fix yourself if you get hurt!”

At this point, Gina had gone completely numb to the whole thing. She didn’t see any tentacles on her body, but she’d come to expect surprises, so she steeled herself for the inevitable moment when she sprouted a million tentacles from her eyeballs or something.

“Oh," Gina said with a sigh. "Okay. So, what, you made me immortal or something?”

“What does that mean?”

“Uh—that I’ll never die.”

“Then yes!”

“Oh. That’s nice.”

“Yes! The did a bad job, so I fixed it!”

“The fuck’s a Chalza?” And why did that word make her want to cry?

Callana shrugged. “Something I knew about when I wanted to, but I do not want to know anymore, so I do not know.”

“Yeah. Okay. Neat.” Gina pulled the reclining lever and situated herself again. “That’s cool. I’m gonna go home now. Maybe sleep for a while.”

“Yes... Sleep is good.”

 

Hello, friends! If you're enjoying this story, consider supporting me on Patreon! If you'd like more stories, I post new chapters to my mainline series every Monday and Friday, and I upload a new short story every other Wednesday! Below are some of my other stories.

Call an Ambulance!: An eldritch abomination from beyond the stars, a being that has lived through eternity, with no beginning and no end... Might be a lesbian?
The Old Brand-New: Lena lives in a lonely mansion, but one snowy night, a vengeful clone of herself comes to make her pay for the life she never got to live.
Little Comforts: The world ends, and two men, Dan and Andrew, must rush to the shore for safety, pursued by a vengeful soldier and the remains of her family.