Chapter 5
Emmanuel went to his room. Suddenly, his cell phone rang. “Oh, what now?” he said as he walked toward the phone which sat on his bed. He picked it up. The caller wouldn’t identify him or herself. This was strange. Perhaps it was his best cyber-friend in Malaysia and the caller ID just couldn’t pick up the number. “Hello.”
“Emmanuel, please listen to me.”
“I want nothing to do with you, Leah. Leave my ass alone.”
“Please give me another chance. You’ve aged like a human being ages, and we’ve been together for so long. Five years, Emmanuel, you can’t throw away five years together for a stupid mistake.”
“I wasn’t enough, Leah, was I? You had to have my brother, too.”
“Emmanuel…”
“I wasn’t fulfilling your needs, was I? I wasn’t satisfying you and you started looking elsewhere for what you needed and couldn’t have. Was that it?”
“Emmanuel, it wasn’t like that.”
“Tell me something, Leah. Is my brother a better lover than me?”
“You know what? If you insist in blaming me, then, yes, Monti’s a much better lover than you are, ok?”
“That's typically you, Leah."
“You know what?”
“No,” screamed Emmanuel, “you listen to me, and you listen well!”
“Emmanuel…”
“Shut up and listen! I started a relationship with another girl. I didn’t cheat on you, though. It was a platonic thing, a love that was never consummated. She’s a lunar, and she’s great. I kept it platonic and unreal because of you, but you know what? I am going to get with her. I’m going to make it physical and real.”
“Emmanuel, you can’t be…”
“I’m going to give it a try. I’m going to give her everything I gave you and much more! In the meantime, you see if you can find another man to give you everything that I gave you, a man that will bust his ass to give you anything and everything you want, a man that will work sixteen hours a day just so you could…”
“Shut up, Emmanuel!”
“It’s over, Leah, accept it!”
“You are not going to throw me away for a sweet, innocent, virginal twit!”
“I already have. Goodbye, Leah.” He hung up.
Just then, Emmanuel’s phone rang again. He was surprised.
“She just won’t give it up, will she?” He took the call. “Leah, I told you…!”
“I’m sorry, Emmanuel, I didn’t mean to…” said Melody.
“Hello, Melody!"
“Hello, Emmanuel. Are you angry? Is now not a good time to call?”
“Of course it’s a good time! I’m sorry. I thought you were Leah.”
“I just changed my number. That’s why it didn’t show in the caller ID.”
“Oh. Why did you have to change your number?”
“Because Leah and her friends wouldn’t stop calling me, and…”
He interrupted her. “They’ve been harassing you?”
“Yes, but…”
“Why didn’t you report them, Melody?”
“I didn’t want to…”
“This is going to stop. I am going to put a stop to it right now. I am going to call you back.” He hung up and called the local phone company.
Minutes later, the operator took the call. “Persistence, this is Sandy. How may I help you?”
“I am calling on behalf of Ms. Melody Berkley. She changed her number because she’s being harassed.”
“She didn’t tell us that when she changed her number. Would you please tell her to call us to report this?”
“Ok.” He said and hung up.
The phone rang at Melody’s house. Melody’s sister, Melinda answered the phone at the kitchen. “Hello.”
“This is Emmanuel Saralegui. May I talk to Melody?”
“Hi, Emmanuel, how are you?”
Melody was with her, helping her prepare dinner for the two of them. She became emotional like a little girl.
“I’m ok,” said Emmanuel, smiling and forgetting about all his tribulations. “How are you?”
“I’m good. Listen, we’re making dinner. Would you swing by and eat dinner with us? Don’t say no. We’re women and we’re alone. We need a man of your caliber to keep us company and protect us, you know?”
“No disrespect intended, but, do you have a boyfriend?”
“I just dumped him because he told me that I was getting fat, and I don’t need someone that doesn’t love me for me.”
“Good riddance!” said Emmanuel. “I have a buddy who’s desperate for a woman.”
Smiling, Melinda said, “Is he an alien, too?”
“Yes, he is.”
“That would be sweet! Hook me up?”
“You want me to give you his number before you put Melody on the phone for me?”
“Sure. Let me just get a piece of paper and a pen.” Melinda walked to her cabinets, pulled out one of the drawers and found a pad of post-it notes in them. Then she found a red pen lying around because this was the drawer in which she conserved all of her mortgage billing statements and receipts, in a special box that couldn’t be opened without a special key. Luckily the phone had a long cord. “Ok, I got paper and pen ready. Give me the number.”
Emmanuel dictated Wesley’s number to Melinda.
Melinda wrote it down. “The name’s Wesley.”
“Yes, it’s Wesley DiMera.”
“Thank you, Emmanuel. I’m going to put Melody on the phone for you now, ok?”
“Ok.”
Melinda gave the phone to Melody. Then, she went on to finish preparing the Fettuccine Alfredo. The day had gone by incredibly fast and it was now nine fifteen at night.
“Hello,” said Melody.
“Your sister just invited me for dinner. You want me to come by for dinner?”
“I’d love that,” said Melody, excited.
“Don’t tell Melinda this, ok? I’m bringing a friend with me.”
“That sounds great.”
“Let me get ready and call my friend to tell him to come with me, and, you know… go… I am so excited.”
“Me, too, I am excited in every way.”
“Is that an invitation?”
She cleared her throat. “I don’t know. What do you think?”
“I think it’s an invitation to do more than eat dinner.”
She laughed nervously. “Ok, we’ll see you later,” and hung up. Then she walked out of the kitchen and walked the hallway to the living room. She walked out of the living room into the hallway where the bedrooms were and went to her room to take a bubble bath, relax, and get ready for the exciting dinner.
Emmanuel and Wesley arrived at Melinda’s house at ten. The dinner was still hot. The girls were hoping that their guests would like Italian food. Their parents were Italian. Melody was a lunar, but Melinda was human. Catalina and Giuseppe had Melody after years of trying to conceive their second child and not being able to. They wanted two kids, not just one, two girls because Giuseppe loved girls. They also had a boy six years after having eighteen-year-old Melody, named Giuseppe, Jr. but they weren’t planning to have him. Still, Giuseppe was thrilled with his little boy. He lived with his parents two miles away, but they had already purchased a lot right by Melinda and Melody’s house. They couldn’t move in to their daughters’ house because that house only had two rooms and one bathroom, although the rooms and the bathroom were huge. It was a big but simple house.
Everyone sat down in the dining room. The pasta sat at the center of the table and the plates were in the right places of the table, looking mighty fine. Melinda was using her finest plates for the occasion. She wanted to impress Emmanuel and Wesley and make them feel special. If things went the way that the Rinaldi sisters planned, they would be married to these gorgeous men the next day.
“You guys like Italian food?” asked Melody as she took her first bite of the pasta.
“Of course I do,” said Wesley. “I am Italian.”
“You are?” said Melinda, impressed. “That makes you beyond gorgeous!"
“I am Puerto Rican,” said Emmanuel, blushing, “but I also love Italian food. My great grandparents were Italian. They passed away, but my grandparents are still alive and well, thank God.”
“Do you guys believe in God?” said Melody as she ran her foot up Emmanuel’s leg, inside his pants.
Emmanuel cleared his throat. “Oh, yes, we do,” he said. “That’s precisely why I just decided we shouldn’t fornicate.”
“Oh, really, you’re religious,” said Melody and took her foot away.
“You can say that. I read this book called The Holy Bible and they call premarital sex, they call it fornication. It’s a sin. That’s why I’ve been abstaining from sex for three months, and that’s why my girlfriend cheated on me with my own brother. I proposed to her and she said no. She wouldn’t get married.”
“So, she wanted you to keep fornicating with her,” said Melinda.
“That’s right.”
“She didn’t love you then,” said Wesley, “and if she cheated on you with Monti, man, that’s, man…”
“That’s right. That’s the woman I’ve loved for five years of my life. Our relationship started when I was eighteen because I never dared to have sex before the age of eighteen. They say that at eighteen, men and women are adults.”
“Yes, but that’s for humans, man. That’s not for us. Most of us become adults one year after being born.”
“That’s true, Wes, but that’s changing now. Starting today, all people of our species will age like humans.”
“Is that really so, Emmanuel?"
“Yes, Melody, really, every time we reproduce, and our kids become adults one year after they’re born, we age twenty years,” said Emmanuel. “I was the first to age the way humans do. I don’t know how they did it, but they did it.”
“Humans are crazy,” said Melody. “First, they bring our specimen to Earth. Then, they merge our DNA with human DNA, then, they raise us, and when they can’t control us, they kill us. I mean what’s next?”
“I hear you, woman,” said Wesley, “and I wish all humans heeded you.”
“They mess with things they’re not supposed to touch, and then when it turns out wrong, they want to fix their mistake by eliminating it, getting rid of it. They cry, they lose control, and when their specimen turns out uncontrollable, they kill them. They want to keep playing God, that’s their problem,” said Melody.
“I just wish that it doesn’t occur to them to try to get rid of all of us.”
“They can’t do that no matter how many of us they kill, Emmanuel. They can kill 10,000 of us and the next thing they know; there are a million more of us. All alien adults are reproducing at a rapid rate. Those that haven’t undergone the ‘human aging’ procedure, they are out there, reproducing, and then their kids, grandkids, and great-grandchildren reproduce, too. Three of us, my mother, my child and I can produce up to 10,000 aliens, if we’re all female. You ought to know that each female can have as many as 3,000 babies,” said Melody.
“Are you serious, Melody?” said Melinda.
“Yes, Melinda, I am dead serious.”
“Wow!”
“I’m not worried about humans extinguishing us I mean that would be extremely difficult for them to do.”
“You think you’re a superwoman?”
“What’s a superwoman?” said Melinda.
“A superwoman is an alien female that can produce the maximum in one pregnancy, 3,000 babies.”
“I don’t know if I’m a superwoman.”
“How many superwomen are there?” asked Melinda, curious.
“TOTM just released 10,000 of them.”
“10,000 superwomen?” said Melinda. “There goes our plan to drive aliens to extinction!”
Everyone laughed.
“How can you tell if a female is really a superwoman?”
“You can only tell if they reproduce, Melinda.”
“Oh, crap!”
They laughed again.
Meanwhile, those 10,000 superwomen were making love with 10,000 men, one man for each woman, and getting pregnant at this very moment! Now, the human plan to drive aliens to extinction, the plan that we’d just come up with, it was ruined forever, and the humans who had plotted it had no idea of what was going on. The females finished mating, and then the human men who knew exactly what was happening, they took them miles and miles away to different caves so that they could give birth peacefully, without the intervention of the staff of the Tears agencies. They gave birth to all their children, all the women, in less than forty eight hours, and then the fathers of these children called up Tears of the Sun and Tears of the Moon to get all the babies. There was a problem, though. Some of the babies were pure-lunar, some of them were pure-Martian, and some of them were a mix of lunar and Martian, so out of the blue, and in less than twenty-four hours more, a new agency to take care of these beings was created: Tears of the Universe, and they would take care of lunar-Martian-mix specimens.
However, there were some pure-human babies, who only had the intelligence and the superpowers of aliens, and not the anatomy of them. They were like Shirley. Those babies went home with their fathers because they didn’t represent a danger to other humans, just like they did with Shirley, they let her parents raise her. There were a total of 3,000,000 new living things with different human and alien characteristics. The superwomen and their lovers were ecstatic. The objective of the fathers of all these children was to help aliens populate earth to get back at humans for hurting good people. They knew that the aliens would avenge all those people who had been raped and unjustly and mercilessly killed by evil humans. And this would happen sooner than we thought. At that moment, the human race would be in danger. There were so many limitlessly evil human beings that if aliens were to wipe them out, the human race would be extremely close to extinction. Our plan had backfired on us. We wanted to extinguish them, and now, very soon, they would be the ones to extinguish us. What an irony!
Many things had happened in these seventy-six hours that had passed. Emmanuel and Melody got married and already had a child, Shirley got an award for best singer and songwriter in her music class and two more awards for outstanding achievement in her academic classes, and a report card full of A’s like always. Monti and Rachel had had three sets of identical twins, two sets of boys who looked exactly like Monti and one set of girls who looked exactly like Rachel. All those babies were taken to Tears of the Moon of course. Matt and Mark’s company got numberless awards for their foods worldwide. Their stockholders were extremely happy and literally making millions of dollars in a monthly basis, while the presidents of these companies, Matt and Mark were making billions of dollars in a monthly basis. Melinda and Wes also got married, and had a baby girl. Unbelievably, from the moment that she and Wes became one, all the extra pounds that Melinda’s ex-boyfriend constantly belittled her for were completely gone and she had a literally-perfect body, like all alien females. Unbeknown to her, she’d been sired, and she loved the new her.
Christina and Lyle weren’t happy however. Christina had formed a mass around her ovaries and her unfertilized eggs to keep Lyle’s sperm from fertilizing them. Christina didn’t want to have children yet because she didn’t want her father and her uncle to age twenty more years. Lyle instantly notified TOTM of this problem because he was desperate to have children now. They performed a procedure on Christina that enabled her to have children that would age the way humans aged. Immediately after that procedure, Christina removed that barrier from her ovaries and eggs and during a moment of love, she allowed Lyle to fertilize all her eggs. What Christina didn’t know was that she was also a superwoman. Surprise for us! 3,000 more babies were coming! And for us, things would only get worse, and worse, and worse… if we didn’t accept them.
Christina’s babies were also taken to Tears of the Universe and Christina was also admitted because they needed to check her out to see if her reproductive system was healthy after having so many babies, and they weren’t sure if she was a superwoman. Other alien females had had 2,000 babies even though they weren’t superwomen and they suffered complications and died, but this had only happened to 100 females. Therefore, they fixed every alien female that wasn’t a superwoman to only have 100 babies. That problem was solved. They didn’t want females to keep suffering and dying. The staff of the Tears agencies loved aliens too much, even Martians, because they were teaching Martians to love humans and lunar aliens, and Martians were abiding by those rules because when the first specimen came to earth, he said that he and his family, the Martians, they were here to stay.
One week later, Christina was at home with Lyle. She was sad because her kids wouldn’t come home with her until they would turn eighteen, but she would be able to see them whenever she wanted to, and she would be able to buy gifts for her precious children; let them know that she was their mother.
Brooke came by to visit Christina. She didn’t mean to take advantage of Christina and use her for her money, but she was in trouble right now. The brand-new house that she had bought, she couldn’t make the mortgage payment because she had just lost her job, and she wanted to show Christina copies of her current bills and mortgage billing statements for Christina to pay them. She only wanted Christina to pay a few months of her mortgage, but Christina would pay the house off as soon as she would find out what was happening. Brooke rang the bell. She was desperate. If she didn’t pay the house this month, they would increase her mortgage payment by $200, and if she didn’t pay it within the next two months, the bank would take the house from her.
Christina opened the door although she was delicate in health. “Hi, Mom, I was told to do nothing but rest for the next two weeks, but I can’t do that because you’re in trouble, you need my help, and when you’re in distress, I’m in distress. What’s up?” Christina was so weak after giving birth that she could hardly stand up straight.
Just when Christina was about to fall on her face, Brooke picked her up and carried her like a child. “Uh,” said Brooke as she closed the front door of the mansion with her left leg, “I need help paying my bills.” She took Christina to her bedroom and lied her down on the bed.
“You lost your job?”
“Ever since my boss found out I wasn’t really human, he’s hated my guts with a passion, and he finally decided to fire me.”
“Asshole,” said Christina. “Perhaps you could become Uncle Mark’s new secretary.”
“What happened to Sarah?”
“Sarah has a weak heart and she can’t work anymore,” said Christina as she positioned herself to sit up on the bed.
“Aww,” said Brooke. “If I become your uncle’s new secretary, I’ve got it made.”
“I’m going to call him right now and tell him not to worry because he’s got a new secretary,” said Christina, breathing heavily from the effort of putting herself in the sitting position. “You brought all your bills with you?”
Brooke gave Christina all her bills. “Thank you for doing this for me, my love.”
One by one, Christina called all the companies that provided Brooke service and paid all of Brooke’s accounts. Then, she hung up. “You know, Mom, I don’t mind doing this for you, but you need to work and provide for yourself. You need to continue to be an independent woman.”
“I know, Christina, but without a good job, that is so hard.”
“Don’t worry, Mom. By the time I finish this phone call,” said Christina as she dialed the number of her father and her uncle’s company, “you’ll have a good job. The pay in this company is excellent,” she said as she put the phone handset in her ear. “Hello,” she said to the attendant. “May I speak to Mark Manning? This is his niece, Christina Manning.”
“Hello, Miss Manning. How are you doing?” said Tasha, the attendant.
“I am doing ok.”
“I will put your uncle on the phone for you right now,” said Tasha. “Hold on.” In a matter of seconds, Christina was connected to Mark.
Mark answered the phone call. “Manning Foods, this is the president, Mark Manning. How may I help you?”
“Uncle Mark, this is Christina.”
“Hi, Christina,” said Mark, smiling, glad to hear her voice. “How are you doing?”
“I’m just ok.”
“Giving birth to 3,000 babies at a time isn’t easy.”
“Tell me about it.”
“It’s too bad that we, males, won’t ever know what that feels like.”
“Yes,” said Christina. “It’s too bad. Uncle Mark, I just called to ask you if you think my mom is qualified to be your new secretary, and if she’s not, what are the requirements that she has to meet.”
“Well, in order to be a secretary of this company, secretary of any of us, the only requirements that she has to meet is type up to 100 words per minute and be perfectly able to organize information. She has to know how to use Redfox, Redfox Power Cell for spreadsheets and pie charts, Super Browser, compose email, write memos, know how to upload and download all kinds of files… that sort of thing. As long as she can do all of that and work at least eight hours a day, she can be my secretary. What other jobs has she done? Oh, yeah, she has to bring me proof of her home address, her tax information, and her resume.
“She was a secretary at her previous job. She’s been a secretary for ten years, since she was fifteen years old, but when she had me, she got fired. In a lunar calendar, over twenty years have passed since she got fired. In earth time, it’s only been a couple of weeks.”
“Yeah, I know that. Moon time is crazy and it doesn’t make sense compared to Earth time, the Earth year, but hey, the moon goes 1.5 miles away from Earth every years, so yeah, the reason why we age so quickly is because days on earth are years in moon. Humans don’t understand that because they’ve really never been to the moon and there are no clocks or calendars on the moon, but that’s their problem.”
Christina laughed.
“However, the time that has passed here on earth and the time that has passed on the moon, it really doesn’t matter. What matters is that she was unfairly fired just because of who she is. Did she ever get her final check?”
“No, she didn’t. That’s why I had to pay all her bills, utility, satellite TV, and mortgage.”
“Well, she can sue her former boss. In the meantime, she can start working for me. Tell her to bring all of her identity documents and her resume, her high school and college diplomas, and copies of her bills.”
“Why do you want copies of her bills, Uncle Mark?” asked Christina, surprised.
“To have an idea of what her pay is going to be.”
“Oh…”
“If, for example, she pays a mortgage of $2,000 every month, it would be unfair and dumb for me to pay her $1,500 a month, don’t you think?”
“That’s true. I am so distressed I didn’t think about that.”
“Here, employees are paid based on what they do and what their economical necessities are and the position of secretary is one of the highest-paid in this company. I will give Brooke one week to prove to me that she’s got what I’m looking for, and if she aces my test, you are looking at one hundred dollars an hour.”
“One hundred dollars an hour?” said Christina, leaving Brooke shocked. “That’s great!”
“Ok, she knows what she’s got to do. If she can’t come by tomorrow at ten o’clock in the morning, tell her to call me before that time so we can reschedule.”
“Thank you, Uncle Mark.”
“Thank you for giving me such a great new secretary. I will swing by your house tonight to bring you some food and drinks.”
“You don’t have to. Since I’ve been resting, Lyle cooks.”
“Lyle comes home from work very tired. It would be nice for someone to bring home dinner and dessert.”
“Thank you, Uncle Mark, thank you again.”
“That’s what family’s for. After today, I will have a young boy deliver the food to you, and I will pay him $3,000 a month just for doing that. He’s very needy, you know?”
“Is he human or is he one of us?”
“He’s your cousin, Heath. You remember that boy that I had before marrying your Aunt Amelia?”
“Oh! Have you heard from his mom?”
“Sure, we talk all the time, about him. He’s not completely healthy like all of us, though. He has schizophrenia because Tess’ mother has schizophrenia, and he inherited it from his g