WILL THE HERO BECOME THE MONSTER? Feisty university sophomore Tonya finds a woman's body on the beach with its stomach ravaged. Missing persons return, impregnated with dragon's eggs. When medicine and magic can't remove the egg , Tonya makes a deal...
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you, okay." Tonya crossed her arms in front of her stomach.
"At least come here and let me take a look. Don't you want to know how long you have to live?" Helen's face remained neutral.
"Judging by the girl, not very long." She wanted to turn away, or even run away, but something twisted inside her guts as if her stomach were alive with eels. "Can you help me?"
"Of course, Love. Now come here." Helen put her hands back on Tonya's stomach, which was rounded and hard, as if she were slightly pregnant. The other kids in the dorm hadn't noticed it yet, or at least they hadn't said anything. Tonya draped her body carefully in her pre-diet sweaters. She might look like she had gained her high school weight back, but she was pretty sure nobody thought she was gestating a baby, let alone a dragon.
Helen frowned and closed her eyes. Her hands ranged around Tonya's stomach in a distressing manner, as if Tonya were some object to be prodded and palpitated, not a human being who treasured her privacy.
"Hey! Grope enough?"
"Sorry, but figuring this out isn't easy. The dragon is inside a tough shell, which makes it harder to sense through. I'm trying to detect its life force to see if that gives me a clue to what kind of dragon it is."
"Shouldn't it be the same kind of dragon the other swimmers had?"
"You would think so, but there's something different about this one. I don't know. This whole way of hatching a dragon's egg is an innovation, created by magic. First the dragon's egg is put inside you, like those parasitic wasps who inject their eggs inside a caterpillar. At first, the caterpillar goes on with life, never noticing that it's full of eggs. Next, as the tiny eggs hatch and start to release chemicals into the poor caterpillar, its behavior changes. Its mind is controlled by the growing creatures within." Helen narrowed her eyes at Tonya.
"What are you getting at? Do I seem different?"
"You tell me. Would the Tonya I'm used to hide a life-threatening problem from me?"
"You've done it to me."
"That's not the same. I'm an adult. Adults are supposed to protect their children." She looked deeply into Tonya's eyes, as if searching for the parasite within. It was creepy.
Tonya looked away. "This thing is not affecting my mind, okay!"
Helen shrugged. "If you say so. Let's hope this dragon doesn't hatch like the wasp larvae."
"Why?"
"When the grubs mature, they dig their way out of the host, all at the same time."
"Which kills it."
"No, actually it doesn't. The grubs spin a special silk cork to stop up the exit hole on the way out. That way the caterpillar doesn't bleed to death."
"So, maybe I don't have to end up like that swimmer?" A hole in her stomach with some silk to plug it up still sounded fatal to Tonya. "I was hoping you could cure me without letting the dragon hatch."
"Maybe something stopped the natural process for the swimmer and that's why she died. What if the dragon's eggs can hatch and preserve the host?" asked Helen.
"Not likely." Tonya had seen videos about parasitic wasps on the National Geographic website. "Even if the wasps don't kill the caterpillar, the caterpillar's mind is gone. It turns into a mind-control zombie. It stops eating and spins a silk cocoon around the grubs." Tonya sighed. "The caterpillar starves to death protecting its enemy's babies, and so it dies, without ever turning into a butterfly."
"Don't worry, I won't let you turn into anybody's poor caterpillar." Helen's forehead creased deeply, and her smile looked forced.
"How long do you think I have to live?"
"I don't feel the stirring of life in the egg yet, so we don't need to panic. You might have a week or so before it can hatch. Why don't you go back to the dorm and rest while I do a bit of research? I'm sure a surgeon at the hospital can remove it, just like they did for the swimmers."
"Sure, I could use a nap." Tonya smiled, hoping her aunt wouldn't see through her false bravery, the way she had seen through Helen's fake smile.
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50,000 words of the first draft of this story was written during NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). I like to do this challenge annually because it's so much fun to draft a novel quickly. It's a bit crazy to get up at 5:00 a.m. on weekdays to write before work, but it works.
2024 update: Good news! This story is revised and published as Double Dead Magic.
Read the serial for free without ads here: https://reamstories.com/maaja
Thanks, and happy reading!
Maaja
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