Chapter. 4 All Alone
Over the weeks Billie felt himself beginning to distance from his family. The thoughts of Favul and Tusk haunted him over and over again every night. He could be with her now, holding her in his arms, grooming her. They could be preparing for their own family. He would have to hunt alone now if he was to get any meat. The Muumoo's shrieks he will have to grow used to.
His parents grew worried over his detachment, even his mother couldn't seem to shake him from it. The outside families were beginning to scorn them for keeping a full-grown son inside with them still. He should be tossed out to fend for himself like the rest! Shadow wouldn't have any of it.
"Why should he have to leave? He will never have a partner and no cave. I don't want to see my son shivering in the musty corners of the caverns, trying to etch out a meaningless life." Katie added, still brooding in the corner by herself. She was not the same fighter as in the past.
"If we won't then the others will. It's considered unnatural." He stared back at her thoughtfully. "I don't want to throw him out either."
"Unnatural? What about us being together? Mog and Shikha? That's even more unnatural! We have plenty of room here." She distressed, the almost pitch blackness of the cave made it even worse. She had to feel her way around and use her acute sense of smell inherited from her mother.
Billie could hear every word. His back turned to them as he lay on the floor, pretending to sleep among his brothers and sisters. Nerok himself had already left to join the others.
He so desperately wanted to leave but what chance now that he had? His arm still had a long way to heal and it would never be the same. Being able to work hard even seemed impossible. His future was a dead end for sure. He felt his eyes water. Never was he very good at containing his feelings. The young half-breed picked himself up and began to sob at them.
"I have no life! I have nothing anymore but the shredded clothing on my waist!" He shrieked at them.
"Calm down son." Shadow lumbered forward.
"No! Why did you two create me for? My life has been hell! I am no Morlock! Not an Eloi! I do not fit in with the dark dwellers and not even the Eloi want to know me! Not even the Eloi-ork I was coming to grow close to! I am nothing!" He beat his fists on the ground, ignoring the sharp pain.
"Stop it now before you hurt your arm again." Shadow grabbed him, squeezing his shoulder. Katie drew from them, afraid to approach her large son. All what she could see was their silhouettes and glowing eyes.
"I hate everybody! I wanna kill them all!" Billie roared, his eyes bulged out. He fisted his father in the chest and clambered out from their home. His breath roared in and out of his lungs.
Shadow was hesitant to follow, surely he must do something. The poor boy was raging inside. The troubled half-breed may be weak in mind but he had his father's arms of steel.
Billie escaped out above ground in the daylight. The clouds cloaked his sensitive skin from the strong sun's torching rays. His eyes poorly adjusted themselves to his surroundings. His huge pupils could only restrict so much to keep him comfortable. He snorted loudly like a proud stallion and scurried into the wood's shadows. His hovering figure with his arms held out low worsened his appearance.
If only he had his mother always perhaps he wouldn't be such a soft-hearted pussy. He leapt over a log and found the strong scent of the Eloi laid out before him. The large group was close by.
The group's leader stood leading against a tree with eyes half-closed in a sleepy stupor. It was Tago, one of the foundation Eloi who had helped lead to a new revolution. Only then he was young and full of fire.
His body wasn't used to this new lifestyle of aging. His kind, for so long have been bred to be slaughtered right away when just mature. Now his body reacted brutally. His knees and hips roared with pain and some mornings he just would lie there in his leaf bedding. Sometimes the pain in his back would make him roll over and over. He would jerk his head back and shriek in pain. The Eloi around him would shrink away. It wasn't a good idea to be around him when he was throwing a fit.
Katie no longer came to him when called now. He searched the land but not a trace of her scent was found. Later the other Eloi picked it up leading to the caverns of his greatest enemy. She had turned her back against her own kind.
"Katie." He murmured under his breath. His heavy eyes closed fully as he searched his own thoughts. She was the first female he actually fell for. In the beginning he had no attachments for any of the Eloi around him. They were just other life forms that wandered the earth. They were just like the trees. They were just there and he could care less if they disappeared and never returned. But not with Katie. Something about her moved him deeply inside, so deeply that he thought his brain would turn itself inside out. He wanted her with him everywhere, all to himself.
He started out a very gentle Eloi like all the others. After the Time Traveler's training he gained a new conscious within himself. That will power to fight for himself. It was an instinct that still hung on but was carted away to the darkest part of his memories. Now he knew who he was and what individualism was. For some reason that made no sense to him like many other things, this deemed positive thing turned him savage. Maybe if he was real gentle with Katie and showed her that she meant the world to him it would have been likely they both paired happily.
That was another problem. He didn't know how to actually "love." He knew how to flirt with females and run about and sleep with them but not actual bondage. When Katie refused his advances again and again he felt a deep anger rise up. He must have her.
Even after all these years he never was sorry for that night that he spoiled her. He had gotten his way after all. His mind was too sick now to change. His soft blue eyes turned ugly like that of some rutting animal. Sharp and prodding to seize a moment to do harm. He was the extreme example of what happened to the Eloi after their newfound feelings. It took control of his feeble mind and infested him.
Even the other Eloi were afraid of him. The females would cower at the sight of him and most knew better than to fight when he wanted them. The males kept clear out of his way, afraid to feel his striking hand over the back of their heads. His own children were not safe from his raging blows either. Some were knocked from their mother's arms and killed as their necks would twist from the ground's impact.
The Eloi were his prisoners. His most devoted followers helped make his leadership stronger over them all. It would not last long he knew. Soon they were flourished back in the upper hills with the Morlocks.
Oh how he loathed those fiendish creatures. His very masters that he had helped overthrown decades before. It made him even more livid to see his kind loitering with those smelly beasts.
He whined as he moved away from the tree to find a pool to drink from. His joints creaked with each step, sounding off his soreness. He was growing emaciated from lack of eating. The pain still driving him madder as ever.
As he bent over a small stream to sip from he noted a shadow looming close in front of him. The acrid stench of sickening rotting flesh and musty earth hovered around him. It couldn't be. He looked up.
A Morlock stood before him, half way on a fallen tree trunk. For a while they both stood silent like two stones. Tago felt his breath fall short. He must be hallucinating. No Morlock ever had come out in this time of day. It was against every law of nature. It would not allow this obtrusion. Surely this was not real.
He blinked hard and rubbed his eyes. Still the Morlock was every bit as real as him. The Morlock dug his claws deeper into the rotten wood and slowly lowered himself. Tago's legs tensed as he prepared himself to run. If he even could any more.
He spun around and shot off back to his group. His knees cracking loudly. He opened his mouth to scream for help. His body came slamming down into the earth, breaking his nose. He felt the beast's hand around his neck, rising him off the ground with no trouble.
He stared back at the face of his ugly killer. His eyes mesmerized him.
They were familiar blue eyes that he recognized from somebody, somewhere. Only these were cold and so very angry. Not the albino red ones he was familiar with. Only when the Time Traveler flung matches in their face did he note that. Otherwise he only knew them as glowing orbs.
His line of thinking broke off as the Morlock screamed.
"I hate you! I hate you so fucking much! You hurt my mother! You hurt me!" He screamed in that animal language the old Eloi could not understand.
Tago's old anger welled up in him again and he started to kick out against the Morlock's chest. He wailed and cursed the Morlock, cursing his family and his every existence.
The Morlock's fist came crashing down on his skull, causing it to explode from the severe pressure of the strike. Brains and bone fragments went everywhere. The Eloi hung limp, his tyranny over.
The Morlock was none other than Billie. He tossed the lifeless body aside. Tago's followers watched from behind trees, seeing their dead leader took a chunk away from their confidence. This was one kill he did not feel sorry for. All the anger that was built up ebbed away. The beast inside him fled away as did the surrounding Eloi. He walked back through the woods. His eyes softened in satisfaction. He snuggled under a lichen-covered tree and bit into some lemon-sized cherries. With some of the ground moss growing around the roots of the tree, he wiped the blood chunks off his chest.
Now his kind mother had nobody to fear any longer. Why couldn't his father do the same? Oh yes, the light. It dawned on him that he had a major advantage over his cave-dwelling relatives. He could come out in the soft lights of the daytime. The rest of the dopes down below would scurry from the sun's wrath.
What about those other halflings? He could care less about them. Despite being so similar he wanted nothing to do with Favul's siblings. They all had that Morlock lust inside them to kill and fight.
But I have that as well.
"Only if necessary like today." He mused, throwing the pits of his fruit aside. Of all the others he was the most beastly looking. His silver hair grew long and would flow out behind him when he ran around. That's one feature he enjoyed about himself. It was also good against flies. After stuffing his stomach with the tender flesh of Muumoo the flies would try and attack his face. One toss of his head and the little nasty buggers were whipped off. At bad times he would use his hair to screen his face. The hair growing from the nap of his shoulders fell down half-mid his back. Some form of protection from the sun and biting bugs as well.
At the bottom of the pool where Tago had taken his last drink was a nice place of churned up mud. The halfling rolled down in it, coating his back and chest in the cool gooey dirt. It helped keep his sensitive skin further protected. The day's intense heat was defeated now. He plopped on his chest and rested his face on the edge of the solid ground.
A few of the Eloi spotted him and watched him from secure places. A Morlock in daylight? This was something very dire. Billie kept an eye open on them. His aching arm soothed by the coolness made him sleepy. He should come here more often.
The Eloi grew more convinced to come closer for a drink. Billie didn't move a muscle, only his blue eyes stared back at them. They smelled so sweet and were so quiet about their ways. He just wanted to run with them, to play, to sing, to dance. Here they regarded him like a zebra does a crocodile. Some of them climbed up high in the trees low-reaching branches just above him.
He rolled over on his back to add a layer of fresh mud. The Eloi still on the ground were gone quicker than a flash of a lightning streak. The halfling could hear their muscles jolt just as they dashed away. The Eloi may be weak compared to the Morlocks but they were nimble. Most of them. The ones bred by their masters were slow in response and some even fainted right there on the spot. These were picked off first, by some carnivore that figured one of the little people being gone wouldn't be noticed.
Some of the weaker male Morlocks were starting to view the Eloi females as something other than food too. Since they could not breed their own kind they ventured out in search of the weaker women to accomplish their needs. At least the female Eloi didn't care if their partners had a cave or not. Most of the matings resulted from rape. Some died from the bite wounds inflicted on their shoulders. The Morlocks forget that their partners were very thin-skinned.
A few more tender-hearted males would court them in restrained fashions, creating curiosity among the Eloi into joining their games. Mating was Eloi's favorite past time so they reluctantly allowed themselves to be approached. Only the boldest of the women submitted themselves in the grasp of their savage enemy.
Still it would be a very long time before the two species would altogether combine themselves. In their genetic makeup, still pounded the role of the prey and predator. It took a lot of self-discipline to not break the new rules that changed their lifestyle so quickly.
Billie, a poster-child as of this coming of a new age, was stuck between their two worlds. He tried very much to be what he looked like the most.
He got up and scratched his claws against a nearby tree and stretched. The mud formed a crusty shell over his skin and hung in clumps in his hair. He could easily live out here by himself. Why suffer down below any longer?
"This is where I truly belong." He concurred, sinking his claws into the spongy bark.
At least up here he wouldn't have to face seeing Favul and Tusk as much. He tore off chunks of bark just thinking about them. He would be so alone with nobody to think about him the same way as they would with each other.
"The world hates me." He sneered. "It's probably the best to just leave this place behind me and look elsewhere for a chance. Father says the world is a massive place, my grandfather told him so. There could be many other colonies and Eloi out there. Maybe even some like me."
This new idea encouraged him. To stay here longer would just be pointless. There was somebody out there waiting for him. The clouds started to move on. Billie feared the brightest part of the day. He drifted deeper into the woods where the leaves were dense.
A constant humming of flies was heard not only a yard away. He went down to investigate what attracted the uncommon insects. It was only the body of some Morlock killed the night before. As he suspected, male. The same victim as Billie was. A loser, only this one had the luxury of loosing his life. The flies swarmed around the face and the gashed neck.
Billie picked up his feet, realizing they were sticky with coagulated blood. The dark puddle of drying body fluids spread out and stayed obscured by the shadows. After smelling the individual's body scent he recognized it being one of males that took delight in shoving him around. Now here he lay dead and Billie still thriving.
There were footprints cutting paths around the body and a few scratches in the earth. The fight happened here he supposed. There were a few female scents too.
Females. The bachelors practically worshipped them. Unlike his human ancestors there was hardly any male dominance amongst either of the hominid species. For the Morlocks it was hard to tell apart male and female for us besides size differences. Looks were not something the carnivores cared about. It was being fit to survive. In such a dark life scent was the most important element.
The desire to be "beautiful" was lost to them many ages ago. It was something they couldn't afford and in the end it really mattered very little. Billie was the same way. To him a female's lovely scent was enough to turn him on.
His father, Shadow, had little understanding of his human adopters and their comments of "ugliness." He heard that word himself a million times over from his master. Over time he started to understand the meaning of looks to the humans. Billie never learned such a thing.
After night fall came he stopped his midday brooding as the colony once again spilled out onto the plains. Their howls echoed the call of dinnertime. He would wait for his father to bring down food to his family and feast there. Grief still hung over his siblings and father. They ate in silence, not a smile to be had.
Billie took his place beside his mother and father. His mother shared herself some of the jerky Shadow made for her since she could not stomach the gruesome taste of raw flesh.
Katie and Shadow later talked of their childhood days when the children went to sleep to ease their full bellies. Billie eavesdropped while he pretended to sleep.
"I recall how you used to steal the chicken out of the fridge." Katie giggled. "Dad would get so pissed when he found it missing."
"Don't forget the time he caught me." Shadow replied, scratching his chest.
"I don't remember that."
"Well I had the chicken in my mouth and I was heading half way out the front door and Weena was just about to walk in. She screamed and I screamed and well master was right behind her. He got the horse whip and came after me." He smiled. "First time an Eloi actually scared the pants off of me."
"Dad always treated you like some straggly dog." She stroked his face. "You look like one from a first glance though."
"Oh thank you my tasty treat." He licked his tusks.
"Not so loud that the children will hear." She whispered.
