The Origin of Red

Red started out as a hankering in Little Momma’s gut—a hankering for revenge in the form of a fuck, come to fruition in a gas station bathroom at 3 a.m. on a Sunday with the help of a frisky gas station attendant Red’s momma seen once or twice up at Bud’s Tavern smoking cigarettes and shooting pool.

Little Momma was the capricious type. Sometimes she spent all day curled up on the couch, thumbing through Babies ‘R’ Us catalogs, cooing longingly, a momma hen keeping her egg warm. But other days you’d find her out on the back porch in one of them plastic beach chairs half-asleep, menthol cigarette burning between her lips, cap missing from the half-finished bottle of Captain Morgan resting at her pedicured feet. “I’m gettin’ this thing outta me,” she’d holler. (“This thing” being Red.) “I’m callin’ the Clinic tomorrow.”

But she never got around to calling the Clinic, and months later Red ripped through her like the tiny rocket that she was.

Little Momma thought she might give Red up for adoption, but she couldn’t— wouldn’t—after she’d held all five-pounds of Red, her premature, soft pink flesh and blood, to her bosom.

Little Momma named her little baby Collette Jolene McCutcheon, but that didn’t matter because everyone only ever called her Red.

Red was a healthy baby, mostly. Tiny and bubblegum-colored with a tuft of fiery hair and a strong grip for something so little.

She never did have ten fingers, though. Nor did she have ten toes. She had six digits on each hand and foot and each digit was stuck to the next with a soft, veiny webbing.

Her eyes were funny. Bright blue, milky around the edges. Daytime was too bright for Red. Little Momma suspected it was because she was born at night.

Down Red’s back a growth, which most would call a tail, hung between her legs. It grew as she did, and as she got older she learned to control it. She swished it behind her when she walked, and it could be kind of sexy if you were into that kind of thing—girls with tails. More people like it than you might imagine.

Other than the extra toes and fingers, the webbing, the eyes, and the tail, Red was an ordinary girl. She went to school until she didn’t. She messed around with boys now and then, got her heart mashed in, and mashed in a few hearts herself before she found herself a job. She was a lifeguard at Lake Chattahootchee or someplace like that. She liked it alright. Minimum wage to sit by the water and people-watch.

As you might imagine, though, Red much preferred being in the water to being out of it, seeing how the sun dried her skin out and the water kept her eyes shaded better than any sunglasses could do. She could see better underwater, to tell the truth. But management didn’t care about Red’s sore eyes or Red’s dried out skin; they just cared that state regulations said her ass needed to be firmly planted in that lifeguard stand at all times. They fired her midway through July.

It was about that time that Little Momma got diagnosed with emphysema or one of them smoker’s ailments like that, I can’t rightly recall which one, but the bottom line was that Little Momma needed money if she was gonna pay for treatments, she was too sick to make money in the only ways she knew how. So, Little Momma turned to her child.

“Red honey,” she told her. “You got all the makings of a call girl. It’s in your blood, Baby. Look at you. You’re exotic. You got the same cream-white skin I got. You got that fire red hair to catch their attention. And you got all your special parts.” She prattled on. “They call that Darwinism or Creationism or something, Hell, I can’t remember all that book learnin’ shit. But generations and generations of the best hookers money can buy are in your blood, Baby. You was custom-made to be the best call girl there ever was. I guarantee it.”
Red was nervous about this proposition, but she knew her momma was desperate for the money, so she went through with it.

As it turned out, Little Momma was correct; her daughter was suited to be a creature of the night. She no longer had to worry about the sun drying up her skin or the daylight hurting her eyes. She found that she saw best in dim, smoky rooms and pitch-black alleyways. Though, it was really her tail that got her famous—the ways she learned to use it.

The business seemed hard to break into at first and the job itself downright terrifying, but within a year Red had made it. You could say she had some regulars, but really it was more than that. Red had couples flying in from halfway across the country to fuck her, she had married men ready to leave their wives after half an hour of lovemaking. What she really had was a cult of loyal worshippers ready to drop their drawers and hand over their wallets at the flick of her tail.

Eventually, this became a problem as it drew a little too much attention to Red’s business, but she got off with just a warning from the Sheriff before she packed up and moved to Las Vegas.

Red did well in Vegas. She made piles of money, which she sent home in briefcases to her momma, keeping only thirty-percent of her earnings for herself, a little more when business would allow. Red was the best little hooker in Las Vegas, and after some time she got picked up by an agent who got Red her own seduction show. “The Exotic Little Miss Red Bares All—From Head to Tail!” the signs read. During the shows, she swam naked in a tank like a mermaid, and then emerged from the water, dripping and covered in plastic jewels. She danced herself dry to old timey sailor songs, swishing her tail sensuously to the music.

A few years went by like this, and one day Little Momma called to congratulate her daughter on her success. “I just wanna thank you, Red Honey. And tell you how proud I am of you. I always knew you was gonna the best. It’s in your blood, Honey.”

Red blushed at her mother’s praise.

“Now listen, though, Baby,” Little Momma told her, getting serious. “These treatments ain’t workin’ for me no more. I didn’t wanna tell you before, but Doc says I ain’t gonna make it past next week.”

Red’s tight little jewel-encrusted belly tied itself into a tangled mess of a sailor’s knot as she burst into tears. She made the arrangements, canceling next week’s shows, explaining the news to all of her regular clients, and booking a flight back home.

Every day and night, Red stayed by Little Momma’s bedside, and though Little Momma was barely able to speak by the end of it, her dying wish was for a grandbaby she could watch from Heaven. She told Red, “The secret to making a baby come out special like you are: McCutcheon family blood, reckless indecision, and a whole lotta Captain Morgan. And don’t never listen to what nobody else tells ya, ‘specially doctors.”

Red arranged a lovely funeral after her momma passed on. Gerber daises of every color, Little Momma’s favorite. It was a small ceremony. They didn’t have much family, but a few people from town stopped by to pay their respects, and Red thought Little Momma would have been satisfied with it.
The week after Little Momma was buried, Red went back to Vegas and started up with her shows again, but it didn’t feel the same with her momma gone.

At the end of the year she decided to retire. She settled down, and one of her regulars made an honest woman of her. She had three kids of her own. All three of them brown-haired, brown-eyed, tail-free, no-webbing, five-fingers, five-toes, the spitting image of their granny, may she rest in peace. So normal and innocent it would’ve broken her heart, had she lived to see them.

The family lived in a big two-story out in California with a finished basement and a pool in the backyard. On warm nights, Red liked to sneak out of bed and go for a swim all by her lonesome. She’d creep out of the house without a towel, peel off her nightgown, and dive in. Her eyes would open as soon as they felt the water.

At the end of her swim, she’d dance herself dry on the patio, humming those old sailor songs and swishing her tail to the tune. When she was dry enough, she’d get on her knees and say a prayer for Little Momma. Then, she’d scamper inside and rejoin her sleeping husband in bed, tail swishing behind her as she went.