2021-09-19 - Beaston Has a Baby?!

The piercing cry brings Easton back to reality as if waking from a dream. Or maybe a Dream. Either way he's disoriented, standing in his kitchen in a pair of sweatpant and thread bare tee-shirt, rubbing at his eyes with his free hand trying to get his bearings. His other hand holds a bottle that he reflexively tries to take a sip out of. Except it's not a cold glass bottle, it's a warm plastic one and why is there a rubber top on it? Easton pulls the bottle back and stares at it before telekinetically opening the door and pitching the thing out into the yard where Gunner immediately retrieves it and crunches it into bits. Easton stares out the door at his dog, still stunned before he realizes that the noise that 'woke' him.

He looks around the apartment and his head snaps to each unfamiliar thing. A fuzzy blankie. An enormous jungle themed swing with blinking lights. A mesh pop up enclosure (Easton doesn't know what a pack and play is) He tries to calm his breathing. He's in a Dream. So fucked up hell scenario. He grits his teeth and exhales through his nose, trying to keep the panic down.

"Bennie?" His voice is rough, and not loud enough to carry over the sound of the crying. The crying that Easton can't believe he's hearing. Not in his house. But how? When? Why?! He hobbles for the stairs moving like in the days when he first got his prosthetic, as if his body has forgotten how to walk with it in the face of this fresh horror.

"Eastoooooooon?" Bennie's voice calls downstairs in a plaintive whine. The blonde appears at the top of the stairs in one of her Frankensteined mumu dress turned slip nightie, hair piled on top in a messy bun that has Cheerios stuck in it like she fell asleep in her bowl of breakfast cereal. What's more alarming is the wiggling mass she's holding out at arm's length. The slobbering creature is self-masticating it's chubby little fist in a toothless grimace. Sure, it might seem defenseless at first, kicking miniature feet in crocheted socks, but it's making ungodly wails that certainly are threatening to break the panes of glass in the windows.

"I think we have a problem." A baby sized problem.

"No."

Easton stops dead in his tracks when Bennie appears. He declares that single word with a fierce determination to bend reality to undo what has apparently been done. He shakes his head, "Fucking nope!" He looks up at her, but studiously avoids looking directly at the writhing mass of miniature humanity in her arms, he shakes his head but can't keep the fear out of his eyes.

"We can't. This isn't.. it's a Dream. Obviously. It's some fucked up veil nightmare in baby form. Any second now it's going to unhinge it's jaw and try and eat us right?" The last part is said as a plea, please let this thing be some horrific man-eating monster and not something far, far worse: a baby. Their? Baby?

Easton meant to keep walking to go talk to her, but once she appeared he stopped at the bottom of the stairs and his legs just won't go. He's stuck.

"I woke up and it..it was just THERE. Surely placed by some malevolent spirit in some twisted form of torture ripped straight from the bowels of our deepest unholy...place." Bennie thrusts the baby out again, as if unsure what to do with it, years of babysitting experience gone right out of her brain pan when faced with SuddenBaby. "Whatdowedowhatdowedo?" She's not quite chicken with her head cut off panicking, but it's close as she starts pacing back and forth along the top step repeating that question over and over.

"Okay, uh. Look for clues. How did it get here. Maybe then we know how we can get rid of it. WhO ARE YOU?" She turns the baby to face her, and the pink cheeked face splits in a gum filled smile and makes a cooed little laugh. "IT FINDS JOY IN OUR PAIN."

"But WHY?!" Easton bellows in response to it just being there. "I mean yeah, the veil's tried to shoot me, drown me, blow me up, cut off my good leg but what the fuck is wrong with this hell dimension doing /this/?! This is /fucked/ up!" He stares at Bennie and the baby intently, as if waiting for reality to shift and this whole thing to go away or turn into something he knows what to do with, like a fire breathing monster with poison dripping claws that wants to wear his face, something easy like that.

Easton starts to ascend the stairs, to get a better view of the place. Bennie's throw pillows and cozy blankets are draped over the arms of the couch and chairs have long stopped bothering him. But now? Now he has to contend with pack and plays and activity mats and a bottle rack in the kitchen. The house is littered with baby stuff. There is a straight up camouflaged diaper bag, specifically for men by the door. Easton can see the concealed carry zipper from where he stands.

"We didn't have a baby. That's crazy. We're never having a baby."

He turns back to Bennie and the thing in her arms.

"That's not our baby. That's just /a/ baby. It might not even be a real baby. Could be a veil baby. Because we didn't have a baby. We. Don't. Have. A. Baby."

He sucks in a breath.

"I need to stop saying the word baby."

Bennie can't continue holding the baby out at arm's length with sheer force of willing her arm muscles to do so. With a face screwed up as if the notion causes her physical pain, she brings the it in close to her chest and scoops an arm underneath. "Of course we don't have a baby." She says with firm, decisive confidence.

And then promptly grabs her stomach.

Then her boob.

And then sighs in relief as both seem normal Bennie sized. "Definitely don't have a baby. Not one that shot out of this shoot anyways. Okay. I'm coming down. Cover me, Marine." She pads down the stairs as quickly as safety allows, and the deposits the baby bundle in the play pen, hands thrust up in the air like she just made a touchdown.

Easton's head twitches in worry when Bennie grabs at her stomach and then boobs, worried that something might have happened to some of his favorite Bennie parts. He breathes a sigh of relief that all is as it should be. "Okay. Right. Because we didn't have a baby. It's..." He blinks trying to figure out the date and he pulls out his phone to check. "September?" He looks at it and then back at her shaking his head. "No... It's not?"

Easton backs up to the wall as if trying to press himself through it as she makes her way past him holding that little bundle of person. So much for covering her, she's on her own. But then he's going back down to look out at Gunner playing in some of the first fallen leaves. He looks at the trees and then back to Bennie and asks, "What is going on? Why is now not now and where did that thing come from if not from between your sexy lady legs?"

"No way. It's still bikini season, well, once the storm clears." Bennie says in disbelief, as if Easton has even lost his mind further about the date, no matter if she is sharing the same hallucination about a baby's presence figuratively having thrown up all over their home. Now literally, as a bit of milky dribble ekes out of the corner of the thing's mouth. It distracts her from the fact that there is, in fact, no storm anymore. "Oh jeepers, I've seen the Exorcist. If its head starts spinning around I am going to find religion SO FAST." Instead of grabbing a burp cloth, she starts back peddling towards the kitchen to grab two wooden utensils - a spatula and spoon - and turns them into the sign of the cross. "Power of Christ compels you!"

Hey, it was worth a shot.

"Everyday is bikini season if you carry it in your heart." Easton says, in a state of shock as he looks back out at the woods. It's clearly not summer anymore and the storm that they braced for and then endured has apparently left without a trace. There aren't even puddles in the yard, besides the milk one Gunner left by crunching up the bottle.

"If the head spins I'm going to be so goddamn relieved." Easton glances back at the baby and then shudders. He looks at Bennie's cross and laughs, "I'm pretty sure neither of us are pure enough to really make evil spirits do much of anything." He stands behind her though, just in case. Not in case it actually is evil, but in case it's just a normal baby and it needs someone to care for it. Yikes.

There is a WHAP from the spoon as Bennie wields it behind her to Easton's thigh. "Aren't you supposed to be in front?" Bennie points out, "Or are you just getting my back in case we are snuck up on by a gaggle of toddlers?" Then something occurs to her and she dangerously takes her eyes off the baby to look back at him for a moment, "Aw, you really think I have sexy lady legs? Wait. No. Don't distract me." She blames him, waving that spoon under his nose threateningly as if suddenly this is all his fault. "Just because it's not my baby doesn't mean it's not yours. What were you doing however many months ago. Or should I say WHO."

"If that were an insurgent firing a machine gun, yes. An undead Pharaoh out to suck out your soul? Sure. But it's a baby so I'm putting those great tits between me and that thing just so it knows where to latch onto and I can make my escape." Easton also takes his eyes off the baby to nod, "Mmm-hmm especially in those tiny cut off- focus Marhsall." He shakes his head trying to get visions of her butt in little cut off jean shorts out of his mind and focus on the problem (child) at hand.

He rears back from the spoon and the accusation, his eyes shooting wide open. "Woah! Hey, for all I know you caught some crazy woman baby fever and up and stole a kid. I have done exactly zero extra-curricular boot knocking, particularly with anyone equipped with the baby making facilities." His eyes slide off to the side as he tries to process that it might actually be September and their is now a baby in the house. "Wait and why would you be holding my love child with some other side chick? And why would I still have one good leg and-" he pats himself below the waist, "And all my other bits, if that little gremlin were the fruit of these loins? That doesn't make any sense."

Of course he then has to admit.. "None of this makes sense."

Bennie's ferociousness waivers when Easton lays out his great booby battle plan, a laugh held back with a press of lips that makes her sputter but the spoon is brought back up when he mentions her taking in his apparent love child. "Because I'm NICE." There is a tap at least instead of another smack to the middle of his forehead,

"But you're right, now isn't the time to be dividing ourselves. We have to band together and...rear a child? What does that even mean, rearing a child. That sounds like something you do when you're in jail and you keister some contraband. Step One: don't keister the kid. Okay. Step two. Find out if there is a return policy on babies. Do you need a receipt. Paperwork! What if there's paperwork?" Surely if there was they must've put it in the 'important' drawer right along side their take out menus.

"This is true." Easton admits that Bennie is nice, and possibly even nice enough to help him raise a love child from some other woman, but there has not been another woman. He nods more seriously when she talks about a being united in their efforts but then gets less sure when she's talking about rearing and keistering and then return policies? He grimaces and then shrugs before having an idea.

"You know what babies need?" he waits a minute, "Dog tags." He nods, very seriously at this idea. "Oh what a cute baby I wonder whose it is, oh I know I'll just check the dog tags! Oh how many months old is junior drooly pants? Just check it's dog tags. No one would ever have to end up with a random baby in their house and not know where it came from again."

Clearly the stress has gotten to Easton, but he does help her look through the 'important' drawer. "What does baby paperwork look like?"

"Dogtags." Bennie repeats deadpan, but there is a smirk curling up one corner of her mouth. "If the baby did have dogtags then we'd know it was definitely yours, so that plan backfires right out of the gate." She shuffles some papers, gets distracted by a Chinese food menu for a second with a sudden craving for egg drop soup. "I don't know, birth certificate? Adoption papers? Your girlfriend went psycho and stole a baby from the hospital newspaper clippings?" She abandons the drawer to his search and goes to the fridge where happy sunshiny magnets hold up a few pictures against Easton's anti-clutter rule.

It's also where the calendar is that Bennie puts her convoluted schedule on so they know when they'll have overlapping free time. There. On this weekend in September in Bennie's own handwriting is a circled note: Babysitting for Kensey Fri-Sat @ 6 (a fireman whose wife had a recent baby before the storm). "Oh thank the almighty big giant speck of energy of the cosmos. Easton! Look!"

But the moment of relief is brief, because soon Bennie is backing away from the fridge with an abject look of horror on her face.

Rifling through the drawer Easton grumbles, "I still think all babies should have dog tags." But he has to admit, if only one baby did, it would very likely be theirs and therefor a no go. He perks up and says, "I'm glad you're at least entertaining the baby snatching theory."

When she sees the calendar and breathes a sigh of relief he is there in an instant. "Oh thank god." He releases all the pent up emotions in a long sigh. And it takes him a little longer to catch on to what is so wrong. And slowly his face twists from relief into confusion and then disgust.

"What the fuck?"

Bennie's face has lost all its natural color, all its joy and verve. As Easton seems to come to a similar conclusion, she utters in a shaky voice as she reaches for him.

"I...I don't remember writing that. Easton...do you remember the last...dozen weeks?"