It's Krystal's turn to calm the baby. It's three in the morning. There's no shit, she tried to give it a bottle. Nothing. It just keeps screaming.
She stares at it as it screams.
It screams and screams.
She staggers back to the bed.
Fox is snoring.
She gives his shoulder a rough shove. The muffled crying through two shut doors and a hallway falling on his deaf, sleeping ears, thanks to the earplugs that he had put in before bed.
"Hnnugh?" moans Fox in his interrupted slumber. "Ugh, what?" Then, rousing a bit, he pulls out one of the plugs and adds, not without anger, "It was YOUR turn, dammit…"
"Listen, Fox." She sighs, beleaguered. "We need to talk."
"What?"
"Yes, Fox. An important adulty adult talk. About... the baby."
She flips on the light switch, effectively killing any of Fox's hopes of falling back immediately.
"What's to talk about? I'm on earplugs tonight. Go feed it or something."
Another beleaguered sigh. This conversation isn't going how she had anticipated.
Krystal scoots up next to Fox on his side of the bed, and pulls up the blanket snug around them. She ruffles his hair, and leans in close to his ear.
"I got a plan," she whispers.
"Plan for what?" the still groggy Fox groans, rubbing his tired, baggy eyes. "Fuck, can't it wait 'till morning?"
"The master plan, Fox. The path to freedom. Salvation. A new beginning."
He rolls his eyes in an exaggerated fashion. But his ears perk up, as if on their own, attentive.
Every time it makes a sound it's like nails on a chalkboard.
Even the laughter and soft coos grate on her like a jigsaw missing teeth into her skull.
Corneria has strict policies regarding live products of conception. You can't just leave it at a fire station like the good old days without turning up an investigation.
Adoption policies are a nightmare, too. Not just adopting, but setting a child up for adoption. The government expects you to do all the work.
And Fox, that fucking idiot, suggesting they find some grimy fingered degenerate in a back alley with a coat hanger and a vacuum during the pregnancy.
Abortion wasn't the issue here - she'd have had it in a heartbeat. It's the laws against it that made the process more violent, dangerous.
She'd tried many things. She'd drink a box of wine over the course of the day to cope, just as she had during the pregnancy. She even fed some to the kid to get it to stop screaming all the time, but the ungrateful little wretch puked it up.
If only there had been rollercoasters in the city. Or maybe if they had a trampoline, or a two story apartment...
Another mess to clean that Fox didn't have to address. He didn't know how lucky he was, having to go to work every day.
Leaving her there alone, with that thing. That ugly little thing.
She could see the shape of his face under that blue fur and it looked absolutely hideous. And that ugly little yellow jumpsuit he had bought for him accentuated all of his worst features. Why in god's name did Fox have to buy him that ugly yellow thing?
It's all they had, he had said. Bullshit. As if she believed he spent more than eight seconds looking.
And still she stares at it in its crib, her fists tightening. Feeling shame for every bit of herself she sees in the little monster.
Its head is too big. Its eyes create an uncanny valley that makes even the nicest of onlookers feel an unease when she resentfully has to take the little thing out in public.
"What an adorable little babyyyyy," they lie, faltering voices shaking through clenched teeth. Fake smiles. "How old is he?"
"He's not mine," she would say, eyes bloodshot and dull. Void of spark. Lifeless. Cold. "I'm just the nanny."
What a noble way to earn a living, one of them had the gall to say.
She wanted to hurt that creature.
She wanted to spit blood in her face and beat her to unconsciousness with the baby itself as the weapon.
But she didn't. She just kind of grunted in response.
If Fox hadn't been such a failure as a mercenary, they could at least hire a nanny. But no, that idiot had to go and fuck his hands up in an Arwing repair incident and because he was neglecting basic safety protocols he couldn't even collect insurance.
Didn't even have the decency to get injured in battle. What a miserable, pathetic piece of shit, Krystal would think to herself.
She hated Fox almost as much as she hated Marcus.
Marcus. What the fuck kind of name is Marcus, anyway?
Fox is the type of mammal who would name his child after his first car, or his Arwing or something stupid like that. Probably the case.
When it came time to sign the forms she was too tired and drugged to give a shit. She just wanted to go home.
But now, as she was stuck at home alone with the mewling, useless creature, everything about it bothered her. The name. His face. Her genetics having paid tribute to this godless offering to the world.
What disgust, she felt, at the nature of its very existence.
"I hate it," she had said.
"I hate it, too," he had replied.
And with that, the seed was planted. One way or another, this would all be over soon.
Soon enough? Hardly.
But the decision would be made. One way or another.
"So.." Fox begins, staring off into the distance numbly. Not really registering any of this as real. The lines began to blur months ago, when he stopped getting full nights of sleep. "We're really going to do this?"
"One of us is going to do this," Krystal says, correcting him. "The other will be out of town."
"Shouldn't we do it together?" Fox asks, not looking at her.
"Would you rather us both get our hands dirty or would you rather have a fifty percent chance of going on vacation?"
"I guess."
"You guess what?"
"I guess vacation," Fox says, frustrated. He's tired. He's rubbing his face in his hands. "I guess."
"It's going to be easier if only one of us has to talk to the cops, understand? They could trip us up. Cross reference us. Ask us to answer questions separately that we haven't worked out our answers to. Do you want to go to jail for this, Fox?"
"No…"
"Then you need to trust me," she says, tenderly touching his shoulder. Faking it with all the energy she can muster. "And god, Fox, stop shaking the child!"
"But it's floppy," Fox says. "And he likes it. It makes him stop screaming so much."
She knows the game is rigged. He does not.
But she'll be goddamned if she's going to let him ruin her life any more than he already has.
Every time it moves, he wants to puke.
Like a time bomb of vomit, shit and noise, waiting to explode at any opportunity. Projectile urine and feces staining the eleventh white shirt he's had to trash in the course of the week.
He regrets not having listened to Krystal's warnings against goin' bareback.
He regrets not having her get her tubes tied, like she joked about when they first started dating. She had suggested a vasectomy at one point but... No. No, he wasn't going to do that. Not even now, actually, if given the choice to do so.
He regrets not getting Jojo Hobo to do them both a favor by coming over with the coat hanger and mini-vacuum.
(He does not regret the sex, but that is another story about happier times, unsuitable for the present conversation.)
Instead, he'd assumed that just because childbirth was the natural way of things, it couldn't be that bad after all. He was the ace pilot who took down Venom. What other challenge could he possibly mess up?
Yet, when he looks at it… the perceived room temperature drops noticeably, as a chill comes over his spine.
From what remains of his own baby pictures, Fox would be found sleeping in mommy's arms, or wide-eyed and inquisitive, held up in daddy's hands. Small, tiny and actually kind of adorable, as his parents loved pointing out with "awwwwwss" that made his tail curl with embarrassment at family parties.
The sight before him, thrashing in the crib, bore no resemblance of anything of the sort.
Whereas Krystal's fur was a pure, cobalt blue, and his own, a daring light brown, this… thing had a muddy blue pelt the color of a bucket of rotten blueberries on which a horse had shat a load of dung. Some sort of pale, off-white curl came out of its overly broad, jutting forehead. Even a previous attempt to style the curl into something resembling a mohawk with scissors had resulted in failure to improve the aesthetic value of the creature in any way.
Its eyes, however, were green. Exactly like his own.
In miniature version.
A not-quite-properly-aligned version.
Boring back into his soul. Sending chills down his spine, haunting him with the knowledge that this thing had come from something that once been a part of himself.
The one time he took the thing to the grocery store (a guy's gotta eat something) on his weekend shift, he just had to bump into that General Pepper.
"Well waddaya have here?" Fox's somewhat intrusive supervisor inquired, slapping the nervous father on the shoulder. Fox had already taken precautions to swaddle the baby in oversized blankets, covering the face in part, all of it shielded by an enormous visor on the carriage. Yet General Pepper had nosed his way to where Fox was standing, finding a perfect view of the thing whose face had just been uncovered.
"Wa! Ga!" it yelped.
"Ohh, sergeant! Nice, uh, baby you got there, uh, ha ha ha!"
As if on cue, it began to cry.
"Uhm, and, blue! You don't see many blue foxes around, eh? Sure got that, uhm Krystal color in there…"
"Oh, aha, well," Fox mumbled with a sheepish smile. "See, uh, Krystal and I actually took up fostering recently? You know, uh, to do good for the society? And like, lots of foxes are blue on her home planet, and they are all refugees now ever since Cernia exploded, uh right? So there was this one family who gave their child away and we just thought we needed to do some good and we said yes to take care of the kid before it got adopted back by another family, aha. The, uh, agency arranged it."
"Oh ho ho, what a fine citizen you are, my dear Fox!" lauded Pepper, with another hearty slap. "You truly go over and above for Lylat! Ho ho ho… See ya in the ranks tomorrow."
And Marcus. What a stupid name. He doesn't even remember why it's named that. When it came time to sign the forms, it kind of just came to mind, or something. Actually, he's pretty sure, it was Krystal's idea. He was so drunk that day, the memory is a blur. Where the hell did Krystal even come up with something as dumb! Probably ripped it off an idiot baby name catalog, or Google.
Ugh. Nasty.
"Okay Fox, here's how it's going to go down," Krystal says, breaking a spaghetti noodle in half and grasping it in her hands with another, unbroken spaghetti noodle. "We are going to draw straws for vacation. Big straw gets vacation. Understand?"
"No," Fox says, dumbly. "Those aren't straws, that's spaghetti. And I can't draw."
"Exactly," Krystal says. "So on the count of three, I draw a straw and then you draw the other straw."
"CHRIST," Fox yells, suddenly realizing. "That's our LAST box of spaghetti!"
"Winner on vacation gets the rest," Krystal asserts.
"I feel like I'm at a disadvantage, here, Krystal. I didn't take art school."
"You're not-" Krystal has trouble finding the words. Why did she marry this idiot. Marcus was his fault and she would never forgive him for this. "I pull a straw out of my fist. And then you pull a straw out of my fist."
"What does that have to do with art school?"
"Fox you- nothing. It has nothing to do with art school. I'm gonna count now, okay?"
"Why?"
"I AM COUNTING NOW OKAY?!"
"Okay, Jesus. Count, whatever."
"Mnaaarrggghhh!" the devil cries out, interrupting the both of them for a diaper-changing intermission. The poop is sticky and yellow-green, and far too liquid for the laws of physics.
"Okay, I am REALLY counting now," Krystal asserts, three tossed diapers later.
"Ten, nine.."
"No, I'm counting, you idiot! Eight, seven…"
"Six…"
"NO! FIVE, FOUR -"
"THREE TWO ONEEEEEE!" Fox yells.
And Krystal pulls a strawghetti out of one fist.
And Fox draws a spaghaw out of the other.
"Don't peek until I tell you," Krystal instructs.
"Okay," Fox says, still blindfolded and holding up his strawgh.
"Okay you can peek now." Krystal says, holding up the Big Spaghetti(™). "Looks like mama's going to Vegas."
Fox removes his blindfold and stares at his Tiny Noodle(™). Still unsure what happened or why, he sighs a sigh of defeat. "Now what do I do again?"
"Not my problem," Krystal says, picking up her pre-packed suitcase along with the remainder of the Noodle Box (™). "See ya later, chump."
The door slams and he's staring at something like his own reflection, but only far, far worse.
"Uhm, sir…" Fox prods the back of a young doe in uniform at the hardware store. "Where's the hammer section?"
"Pardon me?" the doe asks. "Do you mean the hardware kind or the pool float kind?"
"What?" Fox blinks at her. "The hammer kind, of course!"
And now he is staring at the selection before him.
The doe turns to leave him to his devices but he stops her. "Wait," Fox says. "Could you bring me like a watermelon or something?"
"Excuse me?"
"Maybe a cantaloupe. Something that resembles the skull of a small child in texture and fortitude?"
"Uhm… I'll ask the manager," the doe replies, uncomfortable. She saunters off in only the way that a deer in headlights could.
Fox picks up a hammer and gives it a test swing, but is disappointed to discover that without something that resembles a skull he doesn't get a very good feel for how it's gonna go down. He likes the weight of it though. He feels like a man holding this hammer. A fox man. And that is probably eighty percent of the battle.
"Fox my dear soldier boy!" General Pepper exclaims from behind him, clapping him on the back like he's happy and he knows it. "How is your small refugee child foster job coming along, sergeant?"
"Um he's…?" He thinks about it. He honestly has no idea. He left the thing sleeping in its bedcage, whatever you might call it, and decidedly cannot hear it screaming. It looked comfortable enough lying on his tummy next to a bunch of old toys, so it's probably doing good or whatever. "He's probably doing good or whatever."
"Probably? Is he with Krystal?"
"Krystal's in Vegas," Fox says, narrowing his eyes bitterly, "with all the spaghetti…"
"Oh uh, that sounds-"
"Sir," the doe says, returning with a red and white inflatable beach ball. "Does this resemble a baby skull enough for you, sir?"
"Yeah, sure," Fox says. "That'll do."
He brings the hammer down with the force of a thousand Arwing Pilots(™) with mangled hands and the beach ball plops onto the ground, deflating. The doe, wide eyed, like a doe in breaklights, collects herself and clears her throat.
"You break, you pay."
Krystal slurps her morning spaghetti noodles, Panther fast asleep in the hotel bed next to her. She picks up the newspaper from the nightstand and is pleasantly surprised to see her stupid ex-husband in handcuffs on the headline.
"Lylat Ex-Hero Fox McCloud arrested for negligent care of foster child," she murmurs to herself as she skims the article. "He was quoted saying he was delighted that the baby had accidentally killed itself while sleeping on its tummy next to a bedcage full of old toys unfed for three days while he was shopping for hammers at a local supermarket."
"Did you say something?" Panther asks, groggily, rolling over, still half asleep.
"No, Panthywanthy, go back to sleep. Everything has gone according to plan."
She looks at the divorce papers that she had gotten him to sign while blindfolded, under the pretext that it would be extra insurance in case he was found guilty for murder.
"And all is well with the world," she whispers as she slides back into the warm comforts of bed next to her hot sexual barbed dick machine. "All… is… well."
