96 - The Alchemists' Daughter

Latoya took up her last candle. She held it carefully, quietly, body tense, and she sat, unexpectedly, in her brother's lap, holding the candle between their knees.

"I saw her again," she said softly. "After Auntie's funeral. I never told you, Leroy, because I didn't want to upset you. But I saw her. So this, my last story of the night, will be

THE ALCHEMISTS' DAUGHTER

Things went missing from around the house. The clothes from my old dollhouse. A pencil, a nail. Bits of food. I heard the scrabbling in the walls, and I couldn't see anything, but I left things out. Bowls of milk and water, cereal and fruit. Leroy thought I was feeding cats, and I told him I was feeding elves or spirits but in my heart I knew...or, perhaps, I hoped.

It must have been a lonely life. Yet as the days turned into weeks, I noticed other things. Books open that I hadn't taken out. Books on alchemy, golems, the occult. Yet I wasn't sure what was happening until I saw her again.

Night. Leroy was sleeping next to me. We had been drinking again, and I was naked and sore, curled against him. In that dark languor of a deep sleep, when suddenly my eyes opened. That was when I saw her.

The doll's dress now included a cape of mouse fur, the mouse's head worn on her head like a hat. She took off these clothes carefully, and folded them. Naked, she climbed over Leroy's legs, carrying a small glass bottle. As I watched, she climbed astride that dark dick. She tied the bottle to the end of his dick. With both hands she pulled back his glans. Her knees stroked his shaft. Tiny lips and tongue stroked the edge of his piss slit.

Under these ministrations, the cock rose, tall and proud and hard. I watched, fascinated, as she used her whole body to stroke and pleasure his towering cock. Until, softly, Leroy grunted in his sleep, and his seed erupted, filling the bottle.

I was not surprised, the next day, to find a milk bottle by the furnace in the basement of our old house. Nor to see that auntie's sleeping pills were missing, or that Leroy went to bed early. Night after night she worked, and I said nothing to him.

Forty days. I read everything about artificial life I could get my hands on in those days. About takwin, homonculi, and ba'al shem. There were legends that said they were born knowing the Art. Maybe that was true. I found a sharpened nail, by the bottle. I found symbols etched into it, where it bubbled in the dark. Yet I didn't touch it. Didn't dare. I waited—for what I thought I knew what was coming.

I had left out a syringe and a supply of **** pads. They disappeared, and I felt sure that my nameless one would come for me, when it was time. As the forty days came to an end, I found myself pretending to sleep, eyes closed, naked in my bed. Tense and waiting for the prick of the needle, the short, sharp pain.

Yet it never did.

The next day, I checked the milk bottle. Yes, there was blood in it. But not mine.

It was at that time I saw the little wound on the back of Leroy's neck. The first of many small punctures on his body. He complained of bedbugs, and we washed all the sheets. Ten drops isn't enough to weaken a strong young man, yet I mothered him a little, even then. Cleaned the wounds, applied bandaids. I didn't tell him what was happening, even though I knew in my heart what was going on.

What I didn't know was why.

Until, forty weeks later, I saw why.

The figure in the bottle was fully-formed now. Small and dark, with little patches of vitiligo like Leroy and I have. Yet where the first homunculus had been female, this one was distinctly male. I saw her, outside the bottle, her legs spread, toying with herself. I saw him, his cock pressed up against the glass. rubbing himself furiously, the bottle swaying as his actions grew more violent.

Her white teeth flashed into a smile as she teased him.

Then the bottle tipped. It cracked. She pulled off the lid, and he scrambled out, his little prick still hard and dripping. She flashed him another smile and shook her ass at him, buttocks jiggling. Then they ran. Right into a rathole in the wall.

"That was the last I saw of her, though we still hear the scramblings in the house every now and again. I wonder, sometimes, how much of us is in them. Was it the blood that made them like they were, or was it that I had taught her that much, in the short time we had together? I don't know. All I do know is that somewhere, I hope, our daughter is happy in the life, and with the mate, she has made for herself."

With that, Latoya blew out her candle.