From: The Puck Mistresspuck@juno.com the Puck 16/6/99 category: sci-fi fiction, fantasy, Altuniverse rating: PG-13 WE THREE This is Dean Koontz's story, he did not name the last charachter so I gave him a name. Jonathan, Jessica and I rolled our father through the dining room and across the fancy olde english kitchen. We had some trouble getting father through the back door because he was rather rigid. This is no comment on his bearing or temperament, though he could be a chilly bastard when he wanted to be. Now he was stiff quite simply because rigor mortis had stiffened his bones and hardened his flesh.We were not, however,to be deterred. We kicked at him until he bent in the middle and popped through the door frame. We dragged him across the porch and down the six steps to the lawn. "He weighs a ton!"Jonathan said mopping his sweat streaked brow, huffing and puffing. "Not a ton," Jessica said. "Less than two hundred pounds." Although we are triplets and surprisingly similar in many ways, we differ from one another in a host of minor details. For example, Jessica by far is the most pragmatic of us, while Jonathan tends to exaggerate, fantasize, and daydream. I am somewhere between the two. A pragmatic daydreamer? "What now?" Jonathan asked wrinkling his face in disgust at the corpse on our lawn. "Burn him." Jessica explained. Her pretty lips made a thin pencil line smile on her face. Her long red hair caught the morning sun and glistened. The day was perfect, and she was the most beautiful part of it. "Burn him all up." "Shouldn't we drag Mother out and burn the two at the same time?" Jonathan asked. "It would save work." "If we make a big pyre, the flame might dance to high," she said. "And we don't want a stray spark to catch the house on fire." "We have our choice of all the houses in the world!" Jonathan said spreading his arms to indicate the beach resort all around us, Massachusetts beyond the resort, the nation around the state, beyond that- the world. Jessica only glared at him. "Aren't I right Hadji?" Jonathan asked me. "Don't we have the whole world to live in? Isn't it silly to worry about this one house?" "You're right." I said. "I LIKE this house." Jessica said. Because Jessica liked THIS house, we stood fifteen feet back from the sprawled corpse and stared at it and thought of flame and immediately, fire burst from nowhere and wrapped Father in a red orange blanket. He burned well, blackened , popped sizzled, and fell into ashes. "I feel as though I ought to be sad." Jonathan said after we had burned Mother and Father. Jessica grimaced. "Well, he was our father." he said. Jessica stamped her foot. "Your'e a stupid bastard Jonathan! You know what they were going to do to us! They discovered our powers and abilities and they were going to kill us, so we killed them first." " I guess you're right." Jonathan said. But he remained doubtful. We are fledgling mind readers,fortune tellers capable of out-of-body experiences whenever we disire them. We have that trick with the fire,converting thought energy into a genuine physical holocaust. Jonathan can control the flow of small streams of water, a trick he finds most amusing whenever I try to urinate, and Jessica can accurately predict the weather. I thought that maybe we were DESTINED to destroy these neanderthals, but, there was a single nagging doubt that we were to be punished for eliminating the old race. "That's backward thinking, we are the new race, with different abilities and new rules." she had read my mind. Her skills are more evolved than both mine and Jonathan's. "Sure, you're right." I complied. Wednesday, we went down to the beach and burned the corpses of the dead sunbathers. We all like the sea, and we do not want to be without a stretch of unpolluted sand. Putrefying make for a very messy beach. When we finished the job, Jonathan and I were weary. But Jessica wanted to do the nasty. "Children our age shouldn't be capable of that." Jonathan said. "But we are capable," Jessica said. " We were meant to do it. And I want to. Now." So, we did the nasty. Jonathan and her, then me and her. She wanted more, but Jonathan and I didn't care to oblige. Jessica stretched out on the beach, her shapeless body white against the white sand. "We'll wait." She said. "For what?" Jonathan asked. "For you two to be ready again." Four weeks after the end of the world, Jonathan and I were alone on the beach, soaking up the sun. "Jonathan was oddly silent, as if he were afraid to speak. At last he said, "Do you think it's normal for a girl her age to be always...wanting like that? Even if she is one of the new race?" "No." "She seems.....driven." "Yes." "Ther's a purpose we don't grasp." He was right. I sensed it too. "Trouble." "Trouble coming." "Maybe. But what trouble can there be after the end of the world?" Two months after the need of the world, when Jonathan and I were getting bored with the house and wanted to strike out for more exotic places, Jessica let us in on the big news. "We can't leave just yet," She said. Her voice was especially forceful. "We can't leave for several more months. I'm pregnant." We became aware of the fourth consciousness when Jessica was in the fifth month of pregnancy. We all awoke in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, sensing this new person. "It's the baby," Jonathan said. "A boy." "Yes." I said wincing at the psychic impact of this new being. Jessica was racked with pain. She whimpered helplessly. Jessica was only a child herself, and yet she was swollen with child. She was getting more grotesque with each passing day. "How can you know he isn't our superior? None of us can read it's mind, we can't even-" Jonathan said. "New species don't evolve that fast." Jessica insisted. "What about us?" Jonathan said. "He's safe. He came from us." she said. "we came from our parents." he said. "We have nothing to fear from the baby." She finalized patting her revolting stomach with both hands. "Even if what you say is true, he needs us. For reproduction." "He needs you, "Jonathan said. "he doesn't need us." They continued screaming at each other-quite like Mother na Father used to do when they couldn't't make the household budget work.. Some things never change. The baby woke us repeatedly every night, as if it enjoyed disturbing our rest. In Jessica's seventh month of pregnancy, toward dawn, we were all jolted awake by a thunder of thought energy that came from the womb-wrapped being-to-be. "I think I was wrong." Jonathan said. "About what?" I asked. I could barely see him in the dim light of the bedroom. "It's a girl, not a boy." He said. I probed out with my mind, and tried to picture the creature in Jessica's belly. It resisted me successfully, for the most part, just as it had with Jonathan and Jessica's psychic prodding. But I was sure it was a male, not a female. I said so. Jessica sat against the headboard, both hands on her moving stomach. "You're wrong, both of you. I think it's a boy AND a girl. Or maybe neither one." Jonathan turned on the table lamp and looked at her. "What's that supposed to mean?" He asked. She winced as the child within her struck out hard against her. "I'm in closer contact with it than both of you. I sense into it. It isn't like us." "Then I was right." Jonathan said. Jessica said nothing. "If it's both sexes, or neither, it doesn't need any of us, " He said. He turned off the light. there was nothing else to do. "Maybe we could kill it." I said. "We couldn't." Jessica said. "It's too powerful." "Jesus!" Jonathan said "We can't even read it's mind. If it can hold all three of us off like that than it can protect itself for sure! Jesus!" In the darkness, as the blasphemy echoed through the room, Jessica said, "Don't use that word Jonathan. It's beneath us. Were' above those old superstition. We're the new breed. with new emotions, new beliefs, new rules." "For another month or so." I said. Humans love a battle hearty, so does Puck, come on let's party!!! The Puck, by any other name, is still The puck. The hardest thing about being a Child of Oberon is you never get enough attention. :::Puck flaots in middle of screen::: ___________________________________________________________________ Get the Internet just the way you want it. Free software, free e-mail, and free Internet access for a month! 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