“Oh my god! Oh shit!” Leandra hovers over me, her knees in the crushed rocks because she’s not only beautiful, she’s also a warrior who can kneel on bloody rock, her hands hovering along the length of me like she could heel me by touch alone. I really, really wish that was possible.
“I think I’ve lost the ability to give my grandma great grandchildren,” I squeak, my voice higher than a mouse with his nuts caught in a trap. “At least now she can stop joking about it.” I cup my groin area and roll onto my side. The pain is like a dagger, but my hands confirm, after a quick search, that there are no spines sticking out of me where they shouldn’t be.
Thank the bloody cactus stars.
When I peel open my eyes, after a sickening moment of horrible gut pain which makes me feel like I could actually hurl, I find Leandra leaning over me. She’s very pale. She’s also muttering something, which, when the greenhouse stops roaring at me and my blood stops surging through my ears long enough to actually let me hear something, I realize is a mantra of shits.
“Oh shit. Shit, shit, shit. Shit stick shit stick sticker. Shit on a pile of sticks. Shit on a log. Shit on a tree. Shit on a forest. Shit, shit, shit.”
“What’s shit?” I pant.
Leandra ignores me and goes on muttering, something about someone named Luna and then I swear she’s saying something about my grandma and all the talk about great grandchildren. She raises one hand and starts doing a count, then joins the other one, raising fix fingers altogether. At least I think it’s six. My vision is still slightly blurry.
“How could I not have clued in?” She wails. She drops down from her knees and lands on her bottom right there in the gravelly rock. I’m starting to realize that we now have a bigger problem than my poor cactus attacked family package. “How old were the condoms?”
“What?” I wheeze.
“The condoms we used when we- uh- that night?”
My brain is fuzzy. I’m not sure where she’s going with this, but if she wants to know, I’ll tell her. “They were new. Newish. I bought the box a few months ago, but those things have a shelf life that usually lasts for years. I always check the expiry. They were fine.”
She goes from already pale to a ghostly white and now my chest is compressing with a side of panic that I’m pretty sure has nothing to do with the old family jewels.
“You used one every time?”
“Of course.”
“Did they have holes in them?”
“What? No!”
“They were intact when, uh, when you- when you took them off?”
“They were.”
“You’re sure?”
“I mean, yes. I didn’t like inspect them under a microscope after, but they looked fine. They definitely weren’t broken or anything.”
I’m still hazy as to where she’s going with this. For a second. Just a second. That second where my nuts are swelling and my dick is raging at me because it just got thrust into a cactus full fucking on, full fucking frontal, with full fucking force.
And then it registers.
“Holy shit,” I gasp. “Holy shit on lots of sticks. Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
Leandra doesn’t respond. Or maybe the way she scrambles up and starts pacing the aisle, her heels grinding into rocks right by my face because I’m still lying on my side, curled into the tiniest man ball, is enough of an answer all on its own.
“No. It’s not possible!” Leandra pants, ringing her hands. “I never clued in. Not once. All this talk of babies and I never even thought… Why? Why do I always get the worst part of the deal possible? Okay, I know condoms aren’t one hundred percent a guarantee and I’m not on birth control, but still. We used freaking condoms. The curse is a real bastard. A sexist, evil bastard that affects me different because I’m a woman. It gave my brothers and cousins an easy pass. Errrr, well, sort of. Alright, so maybe it just affects us all differently and they didn’t have it so easy. I mean, my brother, Toren, didn’t even know he was a dad for like half a decade. That’s a long, complicated story, but when Luna got pregnant with Milo she didn’t tell him because he was so adamantly against having kids and they were already broken up, then the curse brought them back together. So maybe it’s not the first time someone’s got uh with child. Except Luna got pregnant long before we all got cursed. The curse just brought them back together. The curse and my granny’s meddling. And just- just- shit. If the curse cursed my ovaries and made them extra fertile, what else has it done to my body? Is that even a thing? Or can using condoms and not being on birth control and having sex multiple, blissful times in one night, wanting to eschew the consequences still lead to accidental conception?”