The Nest

The Nest








Jesus. Holy mother of Christ. Max had been called upon to go to the nest and do his part. To think, he would actually see a woman!

All of his life he had lived in the amber caves, training day after day. He had grown impressively from his younger, thinner form into a model citizen of the underworld. And he was happy. Not like the other citizens, the ones who had been born in the outside world before the virus came and poisoned the air with a nicotine yellow. No, the morose and depressed, they were nothing like him with their constant longing for the past. A past that was long dead.

But Max, he was pure born. Every breath he had drawn in his life had been drawn underneath the Earth’s surface, underneath the yellow smog that made you choke and cough and slowly deteriorated your lungs to a crippled mess. He had not known the world of luxury and laziness, and therefore did not miss it.

And now, just as he had hoped, just as he had slaved and worked for, Max had been called upon to visit the nest. He would finally set his eyes upon a female. Oh, he had heard stories of their beauty from the older citizens, of the way they were so similar to men yet so different. He could hardly contain himself.

Max was glistening from his vigorous morning exercise routine. Just because he had been finally chosen to visit the nest was no reason to stop putting in the hard work that had gotten him there in the first place. Perhaps, after he had visited the women, he would become a mentor of sorts to all the young budding men underneath him. With him being a minor celebrity already in the cavern due to his hard work and perfect physique, he had already become familiar with a few of the boys who had just reached adolescence. He could train them, share the religious exercise and study techniques that had gotten him so far ahead in the caverns. Perhaps even start daily classes. His father would have been so proud. And envious, no doubt.

Max recalled his father telling him, before his untimely death, that in the days before the virus women had walked freely amongst men. Of course, the idea of that now was ludicrous. Females had been far more susceptible to the virus, and the vast majority of them had been killed right away. Now, women were treated like royalty, kept separate and protected in their own section of the underground system of humans: the nest.

And to top it off, scientists had managed to create a way to grant those few surviving women immortality.

After so much physical training and self-improvement, Max had met the needs of the elders. He had impressed them with his mental abilities, and now he would be performing his duty as a man: he would create a son that was as determined and perfect as he was. Not that his physique and strength would be passed down to his brood, but the will to acquire them most certainly would.

Well, he hoped that his child would be male. If it were a female child that came out of the womb, it would more than likely die. The only women that were still alive were the carriers of the virus, so if they gave birth the child would either be infected or also be a carrier. And even if his brood did survive as a carrier, he would never see it. It would be kept in the nest with the other women to grow up and do their part when they finally reached adolescence.

Max wiped the sweat from his brow with a yellowed rag that hung on the cavern wall. He gazed down at himself, at his ripped torso, and couldn’t help but admire his own form. On the great shard of mirror that he had procured from the wastelands, he inspected every inch of his body. As he suspected, nothing was out of order. He smiled. He was proud of himself, and he ought to be. The ladies were going to love him.

Boy, had Max built women up something awful. In fact, since he had first reached adolescence, it was all he had ever thought about, his driving force to excel at everything physically and mentally. Now, at the age of twenty-two, his dreams were finally coming alive. He was ecstatic.

It had been the previous day when he found out. He had been operating the electricity-producing machine, a device not so far derived from a giant hamster wheel, when one of the hooded elders had come to visit him. The man had told Max to come to the city’s main chamber the very next day, for he had been chosen. He would be given a good meal, some vitamins and a stimulant. Then he would be lead to the nest.

As excited as he was, Max was even more exhausted, and was surprised to find himself drifting off to sleep that night. The very next day he made his way to the chamber where he met four of the elders and was treated to all that he was promised. The food was dry and bland but better than anyone was used to, and apparently full of nutrients too; the vitamins were injected through one of the largest and most painful syringes Max had ever seen, but he was sure they were necessary; the stimulant was sour and sickening, but within thirty minutes he could already feel the effect on his libido.

Max was then stripped naked and lead through the great chamber through a guarded passageway to the nest. Max had heard of desperate men trying to reach the women through these guards, and had heard of their subsequent deaths. Guns being another luxury of the past when it came to killing, the guards had no choice but to wield the most savage and intimidating blades imaginable to encourage discipline. Some so savage and intimidating that even the power-hungry guards did not enjoy using them. The finished product was always far too messy.

Max gazed at the guards as he passed them into the passageway that would ultimately lead him to the women. He remembered being young and naïve and wondering why the guards were so well-disciplined as to never abandon their posts and go after the females themselves. No one would have been able to stop them if they did. Then he learned of the libido and the things you could do to prevent such thoughts. He learned of the cavern’s eunuchs and the luxuries they received for such a sacrifice. Max gave them one last look as he passed them. He could not imagine giving up his manhood, not even for a lifetime’s supply of better food and other luxuries.

The nest loomed ahead. Max could feel himself growing excited, eager to see the beautiful women that awaited him. His penis fluttered, but he tamed it with his mind. Not in front of the elders.

The elders. Now there was an enigmatic party. No one knew of their activities within their private chambers, only of the governing they offered. All that the public knew was that the elders had ruled over the caverns from the start, their first generation created from fragments of a government from a time before the virus. Now, most of them were dead from old age. The newer generation had been elected by the original rulers, citizens of the cavern who met their standards of discipline and governing. No one ever questioned the elder‘s word, for their reign was, to the public’s eyes anyway, fair and just. Perhaps, if he fitted their template, Max would be able to become one of them.

The four hooded men stopped. They congratulated Max a final time before wishing him luck and departing, leaving him to carry on up the passageway alone. Excited and full of adrenaline, and with the supplement reaching its peak effects, Max took the final turn and entered the nest.

At first Max had no idea what he was looking at, but he knew that it was cold and remote whatever it was. The room was a mess of cables and tubes and straws and pipes that gurgled and slurped and rasped away in the blue light of a glass septic tank. Then he realised that it was the women that he gazed at, he recognised their sexual organs from the diagrams he had gotten so familiar with in the last few years. Still, these females were nothing like men, completely different in fact. Max approached the seven of them slowly..

They each lay still on their benches, the stubs where their legs had once been now parted and inviting. Their arms were gone too, all four stumps hosting a rabble of wires and pipes and tubes that ran over the floor and up the wall into various bubbling machines. And Jesus, they didn’t even have heads! Just more pipes and straws and tubes rasping and slurping and gurgling, feeding the women the nutrients they needed to survive, to keep them and their wombs alive for eternity.

Max did not move for a long time. His eyelids hardly fluttered. He watched the seven grey torsos with shocked eyes, unable to keep himself from being disappointed. But what of the beautiful silken hair his father had always spoken of? And the supple lips? The mesmerising eyes? Max sighed and approached the first bench. On it, the name Susan was engraved across its iron length. He ran a hand down the torso and felt how cold it was. He touched a withered and dry breast. He had always expected them to be softer.

Is this what his daughter would look like if she were born and if she survived? Would she sit atop one of these stone benches, draped in wiring with her sexual organs on display like some sort of sadist exhibit? Would she rest eternally on an eighth bench, or would she replace one of these older women? Max's shoulders sagged.

No matter how disappointed he was, the elders would be expecting him to complete the ritual. Thanks to the supplement, he was still capable of this. He had better get started. God, Max hoped he would father a boy.

He sighed again. And there he had been hoping to perhaps speak to the women afterwards. To find out what they were like, that enigmatic and alluring gender.

It was several months later that the guards came for him. Maximillian MacDonald? came a high-pitched voice of authority as they stormed into his cavern uninvited. You will accompany us to the city’s main chamber. Max had gulped as he gazed at the barbaric weapons that had suddenly turned on him, that now pointed aggressively at his face. The hospitality he had once experienced was well and truly a thing of the past. He carried his slightly overweight and sagging body to the chamber, past the bare wall were his shard of mirror had once rested.

The elders spoke to him in patronising tones. They explained to him that none of the women were pregnant despite Max’s efforts and the aid of the stimulant. Max froze with horror and realisation; he was infertile. You know what that means, they had told him. The young man had nodded, tears beginning to form in his eyes. Of course he did. It meant that he was useless to the progress of the population, that all of his hard work and intellect had been a total waste. After using up their time and their precious stimulant on him, the elders had also regarded him as an insult; part of the reason he was dying was out of spite.

Max did not fight, nor protest at his sentencing. He wasted no time in performing his duty. He marched with the eunuchs with his head held high to the execution chamber, an enormous cavern with a single steel booth dead in its centre. Max entered this hollow booth and was strapped to its sides with iron restraints. The eunuchs left the booth and walked to the control panel. Max shook his head. So, he would be sharing the same horrific fate as his father after all. And to think he had thought that he was different from his old man. He felt tears welling up in his eyes again, just as the eunuchs activated the machine.

A thin, steel bolt - not unlike those used to kill cattle in the days before the virus - shot out from the wall behind Max’s head and caved in his skull, killing him instantly.

The guards removed his body from the machine and began clearing the crimson mess from the walls and floor. Then they carried the corpse to the provisional chamber. He was placed onto a tray that slid into a second machine which would process him. The device grumbled and roared eagerly as he was dragged into it. Violently, it began to grind him up for food.









2194 words.