Lump, Part 2

Lump: Escape to Lump Mountain. Part Two: The Nurturing Hand of Edith Cockshank

The girls head to the Nurse's Office, but soon discover that their blossoming pubescence may be leading to more than just a simple abortion...

Sheltered away from the din of public education and the musk of blooming pubescence, the school administrators filed permission slips with forged signatures and applied band-aids to protruding femurs in the nurses’ office. In the back room, the head nurse sat at her desk, Sudoku puzzle book in one hand while the other puffed away on her third Lucky Strike of the afternoon. The window open, she let her ashes fly freely, the floor dappled in flame sterilized cancer.

She turned the page, having finished her morning routine of easy-medium-easy, and with rolled up sleeves was ready to tackle the afternoon hum-drum of medium-easy-hard-medium. These were the trepidations of her elderly life. Though many her age would have retired decades ago, Edith Cockshank saw her life as an opportunity to help the children – provided she had the summers off and only prescribed aspirin.

There was a knock on the door, a system Edith strictly enforced. She cleared her throat and the door slid open. Without turning to look at her patient, she croaked out, “What’s wrong kid?”

That voice, that dulcet croon, the sensual rasp of vocal cords dusty from age and abuse, husks of flesh scraping together like the harps of geriatric angels. The boy sat on the table. He unzipped his jeans and cooed, “Help me nurse, I have a pain.”

Edith grunted. That same kid as always. Jeremy Felcher.

He was a slow boy, but quick to experiment, with an unbridled yet misunderstood genius which landed him in more than a few trips to the nurse’s table. When the janitor found him balls-deep in the school’s shop-vac with a plunger up his ass, they considered expulsion but pitied the boy and decided a “special” curriculum was more his speed.

Bored in the back trailer with the special students, Jeremy often found new excuses to explore the schoolyards. Having spent over seven years at Nulo High, he proudly knew every secluded nook and cranny of the campus wherein a young boy could spank it like a spirited street urchin.

Edith coughed, “Your balls again?”

“No, it’s not my balls this time.” Jeremy stood and his pants dropped. He scuttled over to the side of the table and bent over, presenting himself like a sultry doe in heat.

Was he a fool to dream such romances? He, a third year senior and she, a senior citizen. Could they buck the odds and show the world that love transcended time and decay? He leaned down to the table, thrusting his chest forward, “Help me, Nana; it’s a deep pain.”

Just as the nurse was about to turn, Jessica and Stephanie burst through the door. Jessica shouted, “Nurse Cockshank, we need your help!”

“One at a time,” Edith sighed, still engaged by her cigarette and puzzle. “Wait outside until I’m done with this kid’s prostate.”

Jeremy smirked. Of course she knew, the roots of their intimate connection tangled their hearts and minds as one.

“We don’t have time,” Jessica shouted, tugging at Stephanie’s sweater. The girls fought for a moment, then Stephanie surrendered and her hairy cyst was exposed for the entire room to see, just below her My Little Pony training bra – the desperate purchase of a hopeful tomorrow.

“Holy shit!” Jeremy scrambled over the table, pulling his pants up, “What the fuck is that?!”

“Shh!” Jessica whispered. “It’s a secret, don’t tell anyone.”

“Can you…” Stephanie whimpered, “Can you help me?”

“Fine, sure,” Edith said finally turning. “I’ve got nothing better to do while I wait to die, wy not shirk office protocol and – holy shit, what the fuck is that?!”

“Shh! It’s a secret!”

Stephanie frowned, “Is it a tumor, nurse?”

Edith stared at the lump in shock. Never in her days had she encountered such a thing. Terminating a youthful pregnancy here and there or swabbing an infected throat was one thing – but this alien looking pod wasn’t in any of the school’s outdated manuals.

“Well I…” Edith stopped, cigarette dangling from her wrinkled lips. “I don’t… think this is something I specialize in.”

Stephanie wailed, “It’s going to kill me!”

Jessica asked, “Why do you say that?”

The lump wriggled and Stephanie shrugged, “Host’s intuition?”

Edith pressed a button on her phone, an old landline recently donated by a failing local businesses. “Mr. Hatchback?”

No response. She pressed again, “Principal Hatchback? It’s Nurse Cockshank. We have a little… problem with one of the girls in here.”

The door opened and the principal stepped in, “Edith, I don’t need to know about every time you have to vacuum out some tween’s – holy shit, what the fuck is that?!”

He leapt back, straddling the middle of the entrance. A doughy, balding man at the apex of his declining years, Principal Hatchback preferred the bliss of ignorance regarding the medical woes of his students. When the two-time married administrator’s indiscretions led him down the road of infecting a young girl with his seed, he preferred she flush the aftermath three counties over instead of his place of business.

Stephanie wailed, “It’s going to kill me!” The lump’s suckers tightened.

Principal Hatchback rubbed his eyes. “Now, now,” he reassured her from a markedly safe distance, “no need to panic. You might make it stronger.”

Nurse Cockshank grunted, exhaled two plumes of tobacco smoke from her nostrils, and put her cigarette out on her clipboard. “Want me to get the coach?”

Hatchback nodded; the coach seemed as capable as any. After the nurse left, he patted Stephanie on the shoulder and left. Then he locked the door.

“Don’t worry, girl,” Jessica reassured her best friend since the seventh grade, “I bet they can just pull it off with some tweezers or something.”

Jeremy peeked from behind the table, pants tangled carelessly around to his ankles. “Hey Steph.”

“Hey Jeremy,” Jessica grumbled.

“’Sup, fur tits?”

She grunted, “Your brother doesn’t have any complaints.”

He leered over Stephanie’s growth. “What is that?” he whispered.

“I don’t know,” Stephanie wailed. She threw herself onto the table, the lump dangling over the side like a vile, festering piñata.

Jessica frowned, squeezing her puffed lips together under her pimpled beak. “Hey girl, I know what will cheer you up.”

Stephanie sniffed, head tucked between her spindly, folded arms.

Jeremy half-galloped from behind the nurse’s table. He tripped over his pants and fell to the floor, nearly snapping his dwindled erection in half. He stood again and gently poked the lump. It squirmed in response.

“Don’t touch it!” Jessica slapped his hand away.

“No, touch it!” Stephanie flailed her arms, “Pull it off of me!!”

Shaking, Jeremy clasped his hands around the lump and squeezed. “There’s something in here. It’s moving!”

“Then don’t touch it,” Jessica interjected. “We don’t know what it is.”

Jeremy clamped his hands on the meat yam harder, popping some of the lump’s zits and spraying the room in cottage cheese. He squeezed again, and soon both his hands and the floor were thick with the heavy cream.

Jeremy flicked the pus off his hands, “That didn’t work.”

Stephanie’s head sulked, wailing with each inhale and sobbing at every exhale.

“Hey, look at this, girl.”

Stephanie looked up. Through blurry eyes she saw her friend Jessica, generously spackled with moles and holding her Blackberry. “Girl,” Stephanie giggled, “what are you doing?”

“Facebook!” Jessica snapped a picture of the lump. “At the nurse’s office,” she said while typing, “with a surprise. Getting it flushed. #abortion, y’all!”

“Oh my god!” Stephanie sobbed, “Now everyone will know!”

“No they won’t,” Jessica snorted. “They’ll think it was me if they do. Whatever girl, I’ll do that for you. I will take your shame. I am that kind of friend.”

Jeremy sniffed the residue on his fingers and leaned in over the thing, “Do you think it has, like, a hole?”

Jessica’s nose crinkled, but before she could respond, the door unlocked and Coach Ladysports stormed in, wearing her one-piece tracksuit she thought disguised her concaved chest and masculine hips. Her cropped hair did her rounded face no favors either.

“Don’t panic,” she said to the nurse, “the last thing these girls need is a scared authority figure in an emergency – holy fuck, it’s inhuman!” She pointed and stumbled back, but Nurse Cockshank caught her. Coach Ladysports cleared her throat, “Jessica, this is far worse than three buckets worth.”

Jessica rolled her eyes. “Coach, really?”

“How did it happen, Stephanie?” The coach leaned in and pressed her ear to the lump.

“Well,” she mumbled, sitting up. The lump wobbled as she spoke. “Last night I had my second date with Chad Kroeger, and… well…”

Coach Ladysports was wide-eyed. “Hung like a donkey, pounds like a freight train Chad Kroeger?” Her words were cool, calculated, rehearsed, as if she knew this story all too well.

“You know?” Jessica gasped.

The nurse retrieved a small communicator from her pocket. “We’ve got another one. Initialize containment protocol for Texas; southeast quadrant. Coordinates for the drop are latitude…” Her voice faded as she walked out of the office and down the hall.

“What was that about?” Stephanie asked.

“Nothing,” Coach Ladysports replied. “Now it looks like the sucker is latched on pretty tight, but we can pry it off – wait.” She stopped. “There’s something in there.”

“Ready, girl,” Jessica said, holding her shoe high.

“Will that kill it?” Stephanie asked.

Jessica shrugged. “I-uhno.”

Coach Ladysports tugged at the lump’s sucker. “Stephanie… alright, hold still. I’m going to try and take it off.” She peeled back the lips, revealing a pink underside with rows of little barbs.

“There’s a… huh,” the coach tugged back, struggling. “A tube? What?”

Ladysports slid the lamprey mouth down, along a beige tube until she felt a bulb, thick and hard. She yanked on the fleshy lump sack and it slid away, plopping on the floor in a mound of skin biles.

And what she held in her hand forced a scream as she scrambled back. There, dangling from Stephanie’s ribs, was a fully formed infant with a man’s face. Bobbing up and down from the tube under Stephanie’s arm down to the crown of its head, the little creature didn’t squeal or giggle or even cough.

It just stared.

“Oh god,” Jessica shrieked, “I got it!” She raised her shoe and brought it down but her friend caught her arm.

“Girl,” Jessica sighed, “what?”

“I… don’t know,” Stephanie muttered. “I didn’t mean to stop you?”

The infant stirred, “I did!”

Jessica’s gasped in fright, “It… it can talk?”

“Of course it talks!” Coach Ladysports scrambled to her feet, sneakers squeaking as her feet slid on the linoleum. “It always talks!” She took the infant in her hand, gripping her fist around the little thing’s midsection, “What are you doing to this girl? Don’t you have any shame?!”

The baby’s grotesquely developed face scowled, “I don’t have to explain myself to you!”

Coach Ladysports laughed, “Don’t you have a job? Shouldn’t you be supporting yourself instead of leeching off this poor girl?!”

Stephanie sobbed, “Get it off of me!”

“Why should I?” The infant cooed, “I’m fine right here.”

Coach Ladysports shook the bloodsucker, “Oh, so you like sucking on girls? Stick it in them and never let go, do you! Why don’t you get a real job, you lazy Taker?!” She reached for the nurse’s manual on tub-births to smash the worthless moocher once and for all when Edith barged in.

“We’ve got a situation outside, and it looks like it’s Gretchen again.” The nurse cleared her throat, “Who said they were having an abortion on facebook?”

Jessica and Stephanie’s eyes met; Jessica shrugged, “Sorry, girl.”