Greenbrier Backcountry, West Virginia

October 17th, 2013

Momma Gobble was up on the cutting table, her massive bulk sweating and sliding as she writhed in pain. Her filthy skirts were hiked up, exposing her swollen sex. Two Skin, Momma's husband and brother, was kneeling before her, making agitated snarls and fearful hoots.

Snake Mouth was laying in his bed, woken by his mother-aunt's throaty howls. He turned away from the rotted cabin wall and watched them. Momma Gobble had gotten fatter again, but Snake Mouth wasn't sure if it was because she was with child or if it was because of the two hitchikers they ate last week. Her considerable bulk had distended, red and angry looking, and she had been convulsing on the table for two days now. Two Skin watched his sister-wife's birth canal attentively, so Snake Mouth assumed their family was going to grow by one today.

Hopefully this one kept.

A great gout of blood shot from between Momma Gobble's legs, glazing Two Skin's twisted face with red. Momma's thick hands were gripping the wooden table so hard that the elm began to warp and crack. Another soul-deep scream and the hillwoman was excreting more blood, and piss now too. Two Skin absent-mindedly licked the fluids from his lips. Snake Mouth leaned forward in his divan and saw Momma's sex split open, a gray dome breaching the stretched labia. Two Skin jumped in place, hollering in anticipation as his new nephew, his seventh son, slid wetly into the world. Cradling his muscled arms, Two Skin caught the newborn before it smacked to the earthen floor of the lodge.

Snake Mouth jumped out of bed and approached the silent baby. Momma Gobble was quiet too, her shuddering breath coming slowly now. Snake Mouth leaned forward into his father's arms and opened his mouth, revealing two sharpened fangs and a bisected tongue. The two fleshy, prehensile halves of the young man's tongue curled and flexed over the rubbery flesh of his brother, lapping at the sheath of amniotic fluid. The child did not stir or respond to Snake Mouth's ministrations.

Snake Mouth looked up at his father, saw Two Skin's eyes harden. He unceremoniously dropped the stillborn. It fell in a boneless tangle of truncated limbs and umbilical cord. Momma Gobble groaned. Of all the children Two Skin and Gobble had, Snake Mouth was the only one who survived longer than a few years, the others dying during birth or of failing organs in their infancy. They had gotten used to the disappointment, but there were so few Mountain Men left that Momma and Two Skin had to keep trying.

Momma squirmed on her back, like an overturned pink tortoise, and Snake Mouth helped her sit up. She looked at her husband with her fat face, brown eyes distant with fatigue and pain. She lazily pulled at Two Skin's drawstrings, loosening his mud-caked trousers. Half-naked, Two Skin was pulled onto his kin with a grunt of impatience. Resigned, Two Skin started to rock back and forth on his heels, straining to fill his mate.

Snake Mouth picked up his dead brother and brought him to the wash basin, next to a set of cutting implements and softly molding vegetables.

There was no use in throwing away good meat, even when it was bad meat.