Chapter 5

Logan toiled for the following days on what he should do. He still couldn’t quite believe that he was pregnant. Although it would explain why he was bound to the toilet bowl every morning. As Thursday evening came around, Logan tried to make an excuse, any excuse, not to attend the community centre. But he couldn’t think of any good reason.

Against his better judgment, he decided to go. But he would go late. He didn’t want to be singled out if he were the first and only person there. He needed plausible deniability. As time ticked on, there was no longer any other justification he could make. He had to suck it up and attend this meeting.

He locked up and wandered over to the community centre. He saw lights on, meaning someone else was there.

He let out a heavy sigh as he pushed open the door.

“It’s bullshit!” complained the resident bogan with the most atrocious mullet Logan had ever seen. The man was Shane, a conspiracy theorist and an all-around pain in the arse. He wasn’t dangerous, just the kind of person everyone hated.

“Yeah, how do you expect us to believe this quackery?!” Another guy in a stained singlet shouted. His thick brown beard looked like he’d just strolled out from a wood cutting commercial. Despite his brutish appearance, this was Bruce, the town’s postie. Everyone loved him.

“Government overreach at its finest,” Shane continued to spout out the arse on his face.

“Can we all just calm down. I was as shocked as the rest of you. But all this anger isn’t going to change the truth,” Darrell tried to reason with the other men, which only seemed to make them angrier.

“Truth! What truth? They are making up shit to run more experimental tests,” Shane snapped.

Normally, Logan would chalk this up to conspiracy theories, but after the suspected surveillance in the hospital, he didn’t fully dismiss it.

It was clear by this point that the men in the room were all getting rowdier. One guy, whom Logan recognised as Ben, the new kid in town, was crying. He was a scrawny-looking kid with a fringe over his eyes like you’d see in some whiny emo band. Well, he wasn’t a kid; he was nineteen, but anyone younger than Logan was a kid to him.

“Can we all please stop yelling?” Ben pleaded as the rest of the men ignored him, continuing to shout at each other.

Logan had seen enough.

“All of you, shut the fuck up for like five seconds!” he yelled, and perhaps because they all knew him, or because it was a new voice in the room, they all fell silent.

“Oh, look what the cat dragged in,” Darrell joked.

“If I knew I’d see your ugly mug, I’d have stayed at home,” Logan snapped back. He strolled over to an empty seat, swung it around and sat on it backwards, facing into the intervention circle.

“Logan, are you here because of what the doctors said, too?” Ben asked, the tears still visible in his eyes.

“Look mates, I have no fucking clue what’s going on,” Logan confessed.

“Welcome to the club,” Darrell laughed back.

“It’s the government, I tell ya! They are doing experiments on our bodies. You saw them talking on their laptops. They can put tiny cameras anywhere!” Shane shouted.

“The Government is not gonna watch you, Shane. You’re not that interesting,” Darrell snapped back.

Logan decided not to mention the cameras just yet. Not only would it set Shane off like a wombat with a firecracker up its arse, but he also didn’t know how far the conspiracy ran.

“How do you think this happened?” Darrell asked, displaying some semblance of responsibility.

“Well, Darrell, after fooling around with half the town, I’d say if it were just you, it was karma,” Bruce laughed.

“Oi! It wasn’t half, it was three-quarters,” Darrell quipped back.

“Selling yourself a bit high there, bud.”

“Your wife didn’t seem to have a problem with me.”

As their banter continued to fly back and forth, Logan mentally tuned Darrell out. It was too much effort to even acknowledge his existence at this point. Logan only had so many spoons.

“Anyway…” Logan tried to redirect the conversation back to what mattered. “I think it is safe to say that I likely had to do with that weird light show.”

“What even was that?” Ben asked.

“Dunno.”

“Why was the government so keen to cut us off from the rest of the world?”

“4G! Why won’t you listen to me!” Shane yelled before being forcefully seated by several of the men who were getting sick of his shit.

“Well, the bigger question is, say there is a parasite growing in us, what should we do about it?” Bruce asked, prodding his stomach.

“Can’t we just abort it?” one of the other townsfolk, Logan didn’t know, asked.

“And how would we do that?” Logan questioned.

“Just come ‘round to my place, I think I’ve got a coat hanger and some WD-40. We can pop it right out,” Darrell motioned a stabbing motion.

Logan had finally had enough of his shit.

“Darrell, can you be serious for five fucking seconds?” Logan snapped.

“Well, what else can we fucking do?!” he screamed back. Logan had known him for a long time and could tell this was his response to stress. Like Logan, Darrell seemed to cope with stress by relying on humour. The only problem with his humour was that it was riling everyone else up.

“Look, we are all confused about what is going on. And those government pricks aren’t telling us anything. I get that we are all stressed, but we have to remember that no matter what, we are in this together.”

Logan's speech seemed to lower the temperature. Even Darrell managed to shut up for a few minutes and take a seat.

“So I guess there is nothing we can do,” Ben murmured.

There was a silence. It seemed nobody had any ideas, or if they did, they were too frightened to speak.

A loud creak made the men snap their necks toward the door, where Agent Johnson slithered in like the snake he was.

“Dear men of Claremont. I am terribly sorry to interrupt this paternity meeting, but I need you to come with me. There is an important announcement regarding your unique condition.”

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End of Chapter 5