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Egg Hunter: Cluster Headache
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Chapter 15: Who Am I If Not…
Hunter sat awkwardly in the back seat of Mark’s car. When they had been on their way to the library, Mamata couldn’t stop adoring and cooing over the five-year-old in the booster seat next to them. Her silence now was unnatural…
Actually, the fact that Hunter knew something was off when she’d only been around for less than two days was what was really unnatural. Maybe she knew about what happened between him and Mark and was upset about it?
Hey, Mamata… Everything okay in there?
Hunter thought loudly at her, knowing that she should be able to hear him. There was a long silence before she finally answered.
Sorry! Eternity is sulking and won’t come out of his room…
That made Hunter pause for a moment. He didn’t think Mamata even liked Eternity…
What’s he sulking about?
At first, he assumed that Eternity had overheard something that he shouldn’t have, but Hunter quickly remembered that he had been out of his body during that conversation. There was no way that Eternity could have overheard Gráinne figuring out that he really was just one of Mark’s headmates rather than a real person trapped in Mark’s head and that she had told him to send Eternity back…
Hunter shook his head, trying to get rid of those thoughts. He owed both of them apologies… Eternity and Mamata. He turned his gaze over to Mark in the driver’s seat.
“Hey! I’m going inside my head for a bit to talk to Mamata and Eternity!”
He did his best to try telepathically connecting to whoever was controlling Mark’s body at the moment. He could feel the connection being made, but as usual there was no reaction indicating that they heard his message. He sucked at telepathy… just another in a long list of things that he couldn’t-
H~ It’s no big deal if you aren’t good at certain things~ You have your own strengths~!
Ugh… He hadn’t realized that he was projecting those thoughts. She had a point though. Telepathy with words was hard for Hunter, but projecting images was much simpler for him.
With a bit of focus, Hunter imagined a creme colored rabbit with its eyes closed and ‘Z’s coming off its head. It was a bit off in the proportions, but for a simple approximation of a custom emoji, it should get the point across that he wasn't going to be paying attention to the outside world.
He projected it off to Mark and was rewarded with the car suddenly swerving for just a moment.
H~ You changed to brown fur~ remember~?
“Sorry! Sorry!” Mark said as they straightened the car back in the lane and glanced at Hunter through the rear view mirror.
He gave an apologetic look back before closing his eyes and slipping back into his own internal world.
***
Eternity’s conversation with that old hag had ended up being a complete and total waste of time. After bringing up the topic of “the birds and the bees”, she didn’t even explain where bees came into play! Was he supposed to have kissed a bee before kissing Hunter? Would the bee have stopped her from getting pregnant or would it have guaranteed it!? Of course rather than answer any questions, she just changed the subject to how sex worked. Eternity knew how sex worked! He didn’t need her to explain it, but explain she did.
The explanation triggered some uncomfortable memories for Eternity… him heading to take a shower while a naked girl berated him for not performing well enough. Neither of them had been satisfied with the experience. She was bitching at him because she had been “so close” but Eternity hadn’t had it in him to continue. He must have been too tired to keep going because his heart was racing and he had been struggling to catch his breath. The last thing he remembered was looking at the small stamp collection that he had kept hidden in the bathroom for some reason and eating one, before taking a long hot shower.
Eternity had zoned out of the rest of the witch’s explanation about sex, but he was pretty sure that she never explained how it was related to babies being made, or anything about bees. She had also given up on trying to get any more information out of him, after seeing that he wasn’t paying attention anymore.
When she finally let Eternity retreat back into Hunter’s head, he felt stupid for ever expecting anything from the hag. She didn’t know anything! Not about frogs, not about bees, and not about his real body!
Women don’t know nothing about anything! Especially not your whore of a mom!
Eternity staggered over to his engineering station and picked up Jawshy, giving him a tight squeeze. He bet she didn’t know anything about sharks either! Certainly not that they were great huggers.
“I’ve managed to repel the space monster, Jawshy. Give me a status report on the satellite repairs.”
Jawshy remained silent, clearly embarrassed about his lack of progress while Eternity had been out dealing with the threat…
“Come on man! You’re a shark, not a woman! Surely you weren’t in here doing nothing and being useless like one, were you!?”
“...”
Eternity dropped the shark plushie to the floor and brushed his bangs out of his face as he sat down at the engineering station. “I… I’m sorry Jawshy. You aren’t useless and I shouldn’t have called you Shirley…”
He turned away and flicked a switch at the computer console. Immediately, the cracks on the various bridge equipment disappeared and the broken pipes and hoses returned to normal. Within moments, the bridge was back to how it had been before the attack on the Satellite of Love had begun.
Eternity picked Jawshy up almost exactly as an odd ripple of energy passed through the entire satellite. “What the… Some sort of sonic attack or something!?”
“Mamata. Can you come back up here? We need to go get your… sister…”
Ugh! It was the voice of that old hag again! He should have known the autopilot was in cahoots with her! “C’mon Jawshy! Let's hide! We’ll figure out what the two of them are really up to…”
As it turned out, the two of them were basically up to nothing at the moment. Mamata hadn’t even noticed Eternity hidden in a cupboard, as she came out from her bedroom, sat in the fronting chair and let that dumb white plastic ring slide onto her head, giving her control of Hunter’s body. She then proceeded to follow the old hag out to the library where they talked at empty air as if Hunter was there with them or something. Then when the hag and Mark left, the autopilot just babysat the kid while acting like his mother or something.
“Maybe they’re trying to turn Hunter into a witch or something?” Eternity mused to Jawshy after getting bored of watching and heading back to his own bedroom. “Isn’t there something in witchcraft about a Maiden, Mother, and Crone? If the autopilot is the Mother, and that old hag is the Crone, maybe they need Hunter to be their Maiden or something?
“She probably realized that I was onto them and changed the subject away from bees because she needs Hunter to stay a Maiden!”
“...”
“Nah, you’re right Jawshy… that’d be stupid. What would psychics need with witchcraft? Hunter wouldn’t be tempted by the Devil offering her crumbs when she already has the whole cookie.”
Being a psychic is cooler than being a witch anyways, even if they are all just a bunch of Satan worshipping freaks who spit in the face of our Lord with their mere existence.
With a sigh, Eternity climbed up into his loft and dropped into the pile of blankets that he had made into a giant hamster nest. He curled up into the fetal position and hugged his shark plushie tightly.
He missed Hunter. Hunter might have been a psychic freak, but so was Eternity. They could be freaky together.
What’re you crying about now sissy boy!? How many times have I told you to man the fuck up!
Eternity rolled over in his nest. He’d been ignoring The Voice for as long as he could remember being trapped inside Mark’s head, but this was the first time he’d heard it since moving over to Hunter’s.
It wasn’t hard to ignore though, since The Voice was totally wrong about everything. The Voice would tell him to ‘be a man’ and crap like that, but Eternity was already a badass. The Voice would say ‘real men don't like pretty things’ but all the cowboys in the movies would rescue the damsel in distress because they were purdy lil thangs. Eternity trusted the cowboys in the movies more than he trusted what The Voice said.
Damn thing was pretty annoying though… definitely more annoying than that hag was. Why did grown ups always have to tell him what to do all the time? They were always like this whenever he wanted to just play in peace…
Maybe that was the reason why he ended up trapped in Mark’s head? He wanted to leave his life behind to look for Neverland… look for a place where he would never have to grow up and could stay young forever. But he didn’t find Neverland. He left his body and his life behind but got caught in the psychic nexus instead. That must have been what happened to him. It had to be that!
Ain’t nobody gonna come and save a sissy boy acting like a damsel in distress! Pick yourself up by your bootstraps and fix your own damn problems like a man!
Eternity rolled over again as he ignored The Voice. He hugged Jawshy tight but the shark plushie did little to fight off his restlessness. There had to be something that he could be doing instead of hiding in bed and moping like this. Maybe if he gave the satellite another go through, he’d find Hunter this time? Might as well act like a man of action rather than just sitting here crying.
Being a ‘man of action’ lasted all of five minutes. After a half-hearted walk around the satellite without any sign of Hunter still, Eternity returned to his room and sat on the floor staring at the toys he had left all over the place. The urge to play with them wasn’t with him at the moment.
His eyes drifted around the room until they stopped on the TV screen. That girl was there again…
“Go away, you!” Eternity shouted at the young girl with bleached blonde hair and hot pink princess costume. She couldn’t have been more than 10 years old, but she had the nerve to mimic a man like him! Constantly matching his mouth and arm movements, except perfectly mirrored.
She was an annoying one. Always hiding behind glass and always showing up when The Voice did, just to mock him. Eternity growled at her and she silently growled back at him. At least she didn’t yell at him like The Voice did. She knew enough to know that girls should be seen and not heard, but despite that, she still didn’t know her place. He wished he could teach it to her but… her bodyguard was no joke!
“What? Your knight isn’t here with you this time? I bet she was embarrassed at you for dressing up like Velma to follow me around earlier. Leave it to a dumb girl to think I was dressed like Shaggy. We were clearly doing a Jabberjaw, not a Scooby Doo!”
Eternity reached behind Jawshy’s tail to grab a bouncy ball from the floor and faked a throw at the girl. She grabbed a hairbrush from out of view and faked a throw right back, but neither of them threw anything at the other.
She was too good at this! Whenever he tried faking her out, she knew, and whenever he actually threw something, she deflected it with a thrown object of her own. Maybe if he actually hit her, it would lure that bodyguard out. Eternity’s other hand hovered over the six-shooter on his hip just in case it did come out.
That knight was smart though. It would never come out unless Eternity came too close. No, it was content to watch from just out of sight so that damned girl could get her fill of mocking him…
The girl continued to stare Eternity in the eye, mirroring his every movement like she was doing a bit from Bugs Bunny. Those kinds of scenes were usually pretty funny, but he wasn’t dumb enough to fall for the trick though like those cartoon characters.
Eternity~! Oh my god~ look how cute Robbie is being~!
Mamata’s sudden voice coming from the communicator next to Eternity's holster distracted him just long enough for him to miss the girl disappearing from behind the TV screen. Damnit! Where’d she go!?
Her sudden disappearance just reminded Eternity of just how lonely he felt once more. Hunter disappeared and now that girl did too… It wasn’t like he hated her or anything. He wished she’d stop making fun of him, but at least her being around was better than being alone…
Eternity~?
“Shut up and leave me alone!” Eternity shouted back into the communicator. That autopilot wasn’t even a real person… just a robot made to look like one. And she had hid from him too! Why should he bother chatting with someone like her!
Ugh, fine~!
Great! Now it was thankfully silent again.
Completely silent…
Eternity was back to being all alone…
He grabbed his shark plushie and squeezed it tightly while trying to stop the tears that came out of nowhere.
***
Eternity lost track of time until a sudden knock at his door made him jump.
“Eternity~? You okay in there~?” Oh great, the robot was pestering him again.
“Wh- what do you want!?” He choked out, wincing at how hoarse his voice had suddenly become. It was rough and scratchy like how a man’s should be, but for some reason it felt so wrong.
“I um~ well, I wanted to see if you were alright~?”
Eternity scoffed at that. “If you really cared, you would have checked on me sooner.”
Men didn’t sit around crying… Men got angry and yelled when they were upset. “Where the heck were you when that bitter old hag was threatening me!?”
“I was uh~ knocked out~ But I’m here now~ What’s going on~?”
“Boloney…”
Wait… Men didn’t say sissy words like boloney. Men said fuck!
“F- fuck off! I looked everywhere for you two! Just… just go back wherever you came from!”
“Hey~! Screw you! Why don’t YOU go back where you came from!? You’re the one that doesn’t belong here!”
Hah! The phoney finally stopped with that annoying cadence that she always spoke in! Eternity made her show her true colors… that means he won… right?
Tears started welling up in his eyes once again as he tried not to think about what she just said. He was the real person and she wasn’t! It shouldn’t hurt that she wanted him gone. He shouldn’t be wanting someone to give him a hug and comfort him…
And that damn girl was mocking him from the TV again!
***
Another knock sounded at the door. Eternity looked up, expecting either Mamata or Hunter to come breaking the thing down to tell him that he’s being evicted. If they really did just think of him as some kind of ungrateful squatter, then it wouldn’t be that unexpected of a move…
He let himself slump a bit as he pulled his blanket tight around himself and stared the door down, just waiting for it to shatter under their attack. Except… after that first knock there wasn’t any follow up. No more knocking or banging or any sign that someone was going to break it. Everything was just quiet until about a minute later.
“You okay in there, Eternity?” Hunter’s voice called out from the other side along with another gentle knock.
Eternity froze. “G- go away…” He called back weakly. Great, another voice crack.
“It’s just me, Hunter… Mamata left. Did she uh, say something to upset you? Wanna tell me what’s wrong?”
Eternity choked back a sob. He was supposed to be a man and yet here he was barely able to keep it together and not cry… scratch that. “You guys left me all alone!” he bawled out. “Thought we were supposed to be friends…”
“W- we are friends…” Hunter went silent for a bit before she knocked on the door again. “Could I come in to talk to you?”
“You have total control… it’s your head after all. You could just break it down, if you wanted to.” Eternity grumbled.
“I could…” She paused again… she did that a lot… “That’d be pretty rude though. I do want to respect your privacy.”
That… was pretty new. When had someone given Eternity that respect before? His parents certainly never did. Dad had taken away his bedroom door as a punishment when he was younger and even as a teen, Mom wouldn’t let him close the door when he brought a friend over… not even when it was one of the guys.
Back in Mark’s head, his hideout had only been private because he had built it out in the middle of the fog. All of the natives were too scared of the fog to go out there. Before he had moved out there, there was always someone poking their nose in uninvited; The Admin trying to gaslight him, or Mikey offering a pizza and a joint. He should try to remember that they were going by the names Karen and Zoey now…
Eternity wiped the snot away with his sleeve. “You uh… yeah… you can come in.”
The door to his room opened slowly and Hunter walked in. She still looked like an adorable bunny, although she was a bit tomboyish.The chocolate colored ears sticking out the top of her head was just a bit richer in color than the hair that she wore in a pixie cut. A matching colored fluffball of a tail poked out from between the short shorts and tank top that she wore. It was incredibly cute and just seemed to fit her so well.
It was a shame that her chest was basically nonexistent… Women with small chests were practically men, which meant thinking they were cute made you gay!
God, Hunter was so cute… Eternity couldn’t look away as Hunter climbed the ladder up to the small loft that he had made his blanket nest. She sat down right next to him, so close he could smell her. She smelled like that tea that she had given him that morning. It had tasted terrible, but the spicy and slightly sweet aroma was still comforting a bit.
“Wh- where were you?” Eternity asked quietly as the tear welled up in his eyes once again. “I looked all over the place for you two. For a long time. I searched the entire SOL from top to bottom multiple times… even outside the airlock…”
Hunter looked away and stared off into space for a long while before finally moving again. She cautiously reached out to pull Eternity into a hug, which he didn’t resist. “Sorry… I wasn’t in the body. Gráinne wanted me to give you two privacy for when she spoke to you and Mamata…”
“It figures that crone would be behind it…”
“She…” Hunter paused for another long while as her bunny ears began drooping. Eternity didn’t say anything and just let himself feel the comfort of the hug as he let her process whatever was on her mind. “She isn’t that bad. Ai- Aintín just tends to be a bit too blunt and straightforward.” It sounded like Hunter was forcing herself… a bit insincere. “Mamata said that Aintín knocked her unconscious while she was in her room… before you woke up.”
“She wasn’t there when I checked.” Eternity grumbled. He didn’t want to keep crying so he tried switching the topic to whatever small talk he could think of. Just to give his emotions time to settle down. “What does on-chin mean?”
“Oh… it’s Irish for aunt. Aintín Gráinne isn’t literally my aunt… she’s my mom’s aunt…”
“Why does she look almost exactly like your mom? We had seen her on Ad- er- Karen’s TV the other day. Other than the extra wrinkles, they could be twins…” The resemblance was too uncanny to not bring up.
Hunter hesitated again, taking a deep breath before finally answering. “It’s kinda like a family curse. One of our ancestors on Mom’s side had been empowered… like a couple hundred years ago. Ever since she made the pact with her patron, all of her descendants look identical to her.”
“But not you?”
Another sigh. “The other side of the curse is that it only happens to children born to the O’Fhlaithbheartaigh name. Mom took dad’s name when they got married so I-”
Hunter choked up and started fighting back some sobs of her own. “Only those of the O’Fhlaithbheartaigh name can inherit O’Fhlaithbheartaigh blood. Technically speaking, even though my mother gave birth to me, I didn’t inherit any of her DNA. Technically speaking… I’m basically a genetic clone of my father…”
Eternity felt like he should be comforting Hunter or something as she cried, but it just wasn’t something that men were supposed to do. He put his own arm around her shoulder and tightened the hug that she was already holding him in. To hell with what men were supposed to do!
God! Why was trying to make small talk always such a disaster? He should be trying to say something to comfort her, but nothing came to mind before she beat him to the punch.
“I owe you an apology… a couple actually…”
“It’s fine… It’s not like I was that lonely…” Eternity lied.
“Not about that…” Hunter spaced out once again and it was a few minutes before she finally continued. “I wasn’t all that respectful of your privacy this morning. I snooped around and came across a memory of yours from when you were a kid. I shouldn’t have done that and I’m sorry…”
Eternity let out a sigh. Some things never changed after all…
“I’m pretty sure I know who you really are though after seeing it.”
Eternity felt his ears perk up at the same time that Hunter’s started drooping even more than they had been. “Yeah!?” He asked excitedly. “We should be able to get me back to my body soon then, right!?”
“So uh… this is going to be pretty hard for you to hear...”
He… his body wasn’t dead or anything, was he? Hunter’s aunt-chin had said something about people going brain dead if their soul was out of their body too long… Eternity had definitely been out of his own body for a very long time…
“There is no Marvin Jones!” Hunter blurted out. “It’s a fake name.”
“Th- that’s fine. I didn’t care for the name anyways. Admin was the one who told me that it was my name after looking at her stupid tablet. It’s not like I’m the one who said that it was my name…”
“We know where the name came from though. Mark’s dad had the last name Jones and he had a buddy named Marvin Carswell. Marvin Jones is a mix of their names.”
It felt like Eternity’s stomach turned to ice when he heard those names. He did his best to just laugh it off though. “Well, guess we know where Admin pulled that name out of her ass from…”
“There’s more… That memory of yours that I saw; it was one where you used your power to make illusory money that you gave to your Uncle Marv.”
“Oh… heh… what a coincidence…”
“Eternity… Mark’s dad was killed for gambling with fake money…”
Eternity’s entire body went cold. Everything around him seemed to lose sound, only to be replaced with a loud ringing. “Are you saying that…”
“I’m sorry, Eternity…” Hunter pulled Eternity into a tighter hug, but he could barely even feel it.
All sensation disappeared. Until there was nothing but that ringing noise. The silence was broken by a woman’s voice yelling at him. Calling him horrible things. Blaming him for the loss of her alimony and child support. The only thing that she called him that hadn’t been a slur of some kind had been… Mark…
“Eternity! Eternity!” Hunter’s shouting cries snapped him back to his room. That woman… his mother was gone. It was just him and Hunter once again… and that girl in the princess dress crying inside the TV box.
“I… I got my dad killed…” Eternity said as the coldness crept back into his body. “I’m not a real person… just another one of Mark’s personalities…”
He wasn’t really Marvin Jones. He wasn’t Eternity, the psychic trapped in another person’s head. He was just… nobody… All of his memories… everything that he believed about himself were all just lies that he’d made up…
Neither Eternity or Hunter said anything else for a long while. Eternity barely moved, just sitting there letting Hunter embrace him as the warmth slowly returned to his body.
“So…” He finally started talking after who knew how long. “Are you going to send me back to Mark’s head now? It’s the only place where I belong.”
“I… I don’t have to take you back right away…”
Eternity turned his head to stare at Hunter and to his surprise, she didn’t avert her eyes like she usually did. The two of them looked each other in the eyes for just long enough. This was the moment that a man should be leaning in to kiss the girl right?
Eternity leaned in slightly but stopped. Something about going in for a kiss just felt wrong somehow. Maybe it just wasn’t the right moment, or maybe it was something else instead. Flashes of past kisses with other girls flashed through his mind and none of them were ever satisfying. He didn’t want to associate that same disappointment with Hunter.
Slowly, Hunter released Eternity from the hug and stood up to go over to one of his bookshelves. She pulled one of the books off it and showed the cover to him. It was the first volume of Nancy Drew.
“I noticed that your books were pretty misremembered, so I grabbed a copy of Nancy Drew before we left the library.” She flashed him a near blinding smile as her bunny ears perked back up. “Maybe we could read some together before bed? It’d certainly be more convenient to read it while you’re still here.”
The girl in the mirror bobbed her head up and down excitedly while her appearance rapidly changed from a scared child in a princess dress, to a teenager dressed in the same outfit as the book’s cover.
Eternity smiled back at Hunter as he nodded as well. “I’d like that…”
Welcome back. Sorry its been an awful time. Glad you have made it through so far.
Glad to be back
Come one man! You’re a shark
one->on
Thank you for pointing that out. It's been corrected