Love Hurts
Heinlen filled himself another cup of Black Rifle coffee. Leeds had already confiscated his first cup and settled into a kitchen chair, eyeing him warily. He positioned the coffee cup directly under his nose on the marble island countertop so he could inhale its mercifully awakening aromas. He was exhausted. He hadn’t slept all night and was ripped out of his bed by the DHL man. The same DHL man who laid him low with a life-altering package of reality-busting commitments, courtesy of Simon Magus – the late Simon Magus. Hearing of The Master’s passing hit Heinlen like a shotgun blast to his gut. A deep sadness now enveloped him. The loss was crushing in so many ways.
Are the assets of Simon Magus a gift – or a curse? Are strings attached? How can his life just roll on the way it did yesterday? How can this not change everything? Heinlen’s Earth axis was just torn off its orbital course. And he could tell by the way Leeds was examining him like a bug under a microscope that she knew more than she was telling. It was time they had a straight-up, no-bullshit heart-to-heart. No more secrets.
He jumped right in.
“Leeds....who are you – or, more importantly, what are you?”
She smiled her enigmatic, mysterious lip-curl and slowly moved off her chair. She stood in front of him and gently cupped his face in her hands. Her words were calm, almost hypnotic.
“Look into my eyes. Don’t be frightened. You needn’t be afraid.”
Heinlein looked into Leed’s eyes as she asked. Big, brown and beautiful. Nothing he hadn’t seen before.
Then – suddenly – her pupils narrowed and closed vertically. They became vertical slits. And a thin membrane migrated its way across her eyeball horizontally from right to left. Like a cat or a lizard. Startled, Heinlen flinched and pulled back from her touch. Vertical slits?
Heinlen knew that vertical slit pupils provided cats and lizards with excellent depth perception for pouncing on prey and more finely-tuned their light control for nocturnal hunting. In combination with their eyelids, their vision is optically superior to humans for attacking and defensive reactions. He also knew that humans weren’t equipped that way. If Leeds could stealthily manipulate the slits of her eye pupils by some secret control mechanism…it was some bizarre shit.
Leeds had just shown her true face to Heinlein. Her true identity.
She wasn’t human.
“What the Hell is going on with you, Leeds? You gonna’ tell me who I’m sleeping with?”
She sat back down at the kitchen Island and sipped her coffee. Her telltale lip-curl smile broadened a bit. Her words were calm, even sonorous.
“Don’t soil yourself, Heinlen. I’m good ‘ole New Jersey State Police Detective Leeds, on extended leave. I’m also an Anthropologist with a PhD from Temple University in Pennsylvania. And I’m one other thing….
A hybrid Reptilian-Human freak.”
Heinlen was reeling from his last twelve hours. Watching Leeds communicate with some multi-colored light orb blazing in his backyard, hearing her blurt out that they had to go to Cyprus, him being shanghaied into an omnibus assumption Simon Magus’ asset portfolio by the most prestigious law firm in the United States – and now this!
He spoke as evenly and deliberatively as he could, struggling to keep his composure.
“I want an explanation. All of it. And I want it now.”
Leeds looked more than slightly amused – grinning her signature lip maneuver. But her words were precise and confident.
“You recall that Jack Reacher episode where some wise-guy challenges him to walk outside a bar and fight – and Reacher doesn’t want to do it. But the idiot keeps taunting Reacher so bad that he gets up off his bar stool and walks out to the parking lot. Before he beats the piss out of the wise-guy, Reacher looks at him and delivers the best line in the show –
“Remember – you wanted this”.
You want the truth, Heinlen? Well, here it is.
I am the product of a genetic experiment. My great-great-great-maternal grandmother was bred – by the original inhabitants of this Earth – in an attempt to hybridize their Reptilian-based DNA with human mammalian DNA. Why?
Because Humans are laughably weak – mentally and physically – and prone to illness. They are primates possessed of extreme potential – but hobbled by their unyielding, implacable limitations. Reptilians reasoned that humans needed genetic improvement. Human “Evolution” was proceeding much too slowly for them to achieve even a modicum of transcendent destiny. At least that’s my Anthropological take on it all.
In any case – do you remember that tired old Pine Barrens legend of Mother Leeds birthing twelve children out of wedlock and the thirteenth being the child of Satan? The so-called Jersey Devil? Well…my namesake Mother Leeds in those old days was bred thirteen times. Twelve were stillborn. But she was a tough old ‘cuss. Number thirteen survived – and thrived.
The thirteenth was a Reptilian-Human hybrid female. There were two human midwives present. They both saw the child. It was horned, scaled and had a tail. Its feet were cloven – or, at least, malformed. Both midwives went insane and spread bizarre legends throughout the Pine Barrens about what they saw. They died with five years of their midwifing trauma.
Mother Leeds’ offspring was spirited away and grew strong. It reproduced. Its offspring reproduced. After generations of breeding with humans, its offspring – my family – became able to blend into human society. We looked almost indistinguishable from most humans. We no longer needed to hide in the deep and forbidding woods of the Pine Barrens like deformed monsters and Carnival sideshow freaks. But the Reptilian DNA remained….
Certain Reptilian DNA traits and physical characteristics became dominant genetic influencers. Enhanced ability to see in the dark and quick reflexes, for example – making it easier to ambush predators. Greater body mass-to-muscle strength metrics. Resistance to most human degenerative diseases, except cancer – which is primarily caused by environmental toxins, rarely genetics. Enhanced situational awareness and fighting capabilities – hence the reason why I can easily kick your scrawny ass and most human Special Forces douchebags. My power to camouflage my vertical pupils at will. Quick healing. Tougher skin. And the ability to eat almost anything raw. That comes in handy sometimes…I never showed you that one… don’t want to gross you out.
But the Reptilian DNA also carries within it something else – something magical. An unbreakable psychic connection to the Hive community of all others of our kind. My real family. My real protectors and Gods. You saw me communicating with my Hive last night. The glowing Orb in the backyard.
So… there you have it.
Like Jack Reacher said… “You wanted this.”
Heinlen just sat at his kitchen countertop with his mouth open. He was speechless. Astounded. The Sullivan & Cromwell experience was unnerving enough – but this?
Leeds smile slowly grew bigger than he’d ever seen it. Finally, she spoke.
“What’s the matter, Heinlen? No longer horny for Lizard Pussy?”
Chatsworth, New Jersey
Benevento’s Family Winery – Tabernacle Chatsworth Border
Georgio Benevento proudly looks out over his seven hundred acres of much-coveted Sagrantino grapes. He’ll soon harvest them and score a comfortable payday. He works this farm with his two sons – Alberto and Franchino – and the family enjoys a devoted following of customers who, every year, buys the entire production run of his New Jersey Montefalco Sagrantino table wine sight unseen at whatever prices he decides. It’s a gold mine.
“Papa” Benevento personally imported these vines to his farm on the Tabernacle – Chatsworth border in New Jersey from his ancestral village of Montefalco in Umbria, Italy. The soil of this Pine Barrens farmland mimicks the “terroir” or composition of Montefalco – clay soil, laden with limestone and sandy “sugar soil” quartzes that guarantee exceptional water drainage. Sagrantino varietal wine grapes are renowned for producing big, cellar-worthy table wines in the Italian tradition. Their exceptionally high tannins, thick skins and sturdy structure press into extracts of deep color and powerful fruit-laden taste profiles. Montefalco Sagrantino wine has a complex “nose” or aroma. It is “cellared” in every fine Italian bistro and Estate.
Today the weather is perfect – whatever rain had fallen in the past few days has already seeped through the sandy soil and his precious grapes are blazing a radiant and beautiful purplish-blue by the thousands in the bright New Jersey sunshine, dancing in a divine cool breeze.
As he stares out over his crop he smiles. This is his passion. This is his joy. Georgio “Papa” Benevento is an old-school vintner like his father before him and his father’s father before him.
The wind whistles through his vines and caresses his face. He can almost taste the sweet, tangy grape-jellyish scent wafting up and down the glorious rows of plantings. He pauses and breathes deep, taking it all in.
“Papa” Georgio suddenly realizes he’s detecting a sourness – a rancid, garbagy kind of odor that you find near refuse dumpsters. He looks around, wondering where it could be coming from. Every part of the vineyard is blanketed by sunshine, so there’s no shadows or recesses where this kind of stink should be originating from. A dead animal? It has the putrescent punch of a rotting deer carcass or dead skunk. And it’s getting stronger.
Slowly he rotates 360 degrees to get an overall picture of his surroundings. What was going on? Then – to his left – he sees movement. Three rows over, vines are being pushed over and trampled, broken and split like a drunken gorilla is wobbling through them. The trespasser is flailing its arms through the vegetation like its swatting away attacking bees.
It’s tall – and looks human. It’s wearing some kind of hooded wrap, almost completely covering its head. As it frantically rips Georgio’s precious vines away left and right, it’s making obscene noises of some kind. Not exactly speech – more like a low groaning, gurgling, viscous kind of guttural throat wheezing – interspersed with coughing and hacking. Whatever this thing is, it’s in distress.
Georgio carefully moves towards the intruder, now fully enveloped in breezy gusts of stench that are emanating from it. He instinctively reaches into his jeans pocket and pulls out his large folding knife – and then opens it.
Finally, he sees all of the thing. A man – at least he thinks it’s a man. About six feet tall and extremely thin in ragged, filth-smeared clothes. He’s dragging his left leg behind him. The hood of his wrap is glued to his face by a glistening, congealed, pustulous slime – a gelatinous, bloody ooze that’s dripping down his chin and clogging his mouth from fully opening and uttering any recognizable sounds.
The man’s hands are steaming – burning in the hot sunlight. The skin on them is black and cracking off. Foul exudate is dripping off his fingertips as he seemingly beats away imaginary tormentors and hacks up more disgusting phlegm. It drips down from his face in strings like nauseating, nasty melting cheese.
Georgio Benevento yells out to the man and waves his arms at him, trying to get his attention.
“Hey! Hey you! Get off my land! Get away from my grapes! You’re breaking my vines!”
The intruder pivots towards him and shambles in his direction, pushing down vines left and right, gyrating his steaming hands and frantic arms in a destructive arc of ruination. He’s obviously in agony, being driven out of his mind by whatever is afflicting him.
When it’s within twenty feet, Georgio sees its face – or at least the side of his head that isn’t cemented into the muck and slime-caked garment hood. Its eyes are dull – almost black. It’s mouth – although shrouded by the grotesque, tumorous outgrowth of body detritus that has completely absorbed his lower chin – is open. The thing is now howling and growling like a rabid animal, displaying canine teeth that are shockingly large and threatening. It thrusts out its burning hands in front him inches towards Benevento, dragging its leg behind him, and creeping forward like some nightmarish, dissembling zombie in a bad NetFlix movie his sons would watch.
Georgio Benevento retreats backwards and runs towards his equipment shed. He’s screaming for his sons and snapping his neck rearward to glimpse the petrifying intruder slowly pursuing him.
About fifty feet from his equipment shed he stops running and turns. The thing has collapsed. It’s crumbled into a heap surrounded by splintered and destroyed vines of Benevento’s prized New Jersey Montefalco Sagrantino grapes. The heap is smoldering an ungodly stench into the air around it, where the funk is hovering like a heavy gas.
Georgio, Alberto and Franchino Benevento cautiously approach the fallen thing in their vineyard minutes later. They stare at it sizzling and roasting – crisping itself in the blazing sunlight before they move forward to take a closer look with pitchforks and a machete in their hands.
What remains is a steaming, reeking pile of fetid clothes and collapsed body parts. It’s clearly has burned itself to death in the sunlight. Even its pus-covered face is now a concave mask of putrid, vile debris that is still loudly crackling like frying bacon, revealing a mouthful of huge, pointed – and extremely sharp – teeth. Animal teeth – not human teeth.
The Beneventos bless themselves in unison – they are devoted Catholics – and promptly call the New Jersey State Police.
*NONE OF THIS WORK PRODUCT IS AI
Copyright 2026, Jon & Jedediah Croft
www.bogironfoundry.com
Email: vlchek1@gmail.com
Post: BOG IRON FOUNDRY, PO Box 2017, Southampton, NJ 08088
