Women of the Grey- The Complete Trilogy

by Carol James Marshall

  Lisa darling,

  Be sweet and do as you are told. Breed Lisa, have a daughter for The Grey.

  Kisses,

  Superior Mother

  New hell—this was just a lemon-scented new hell. Lisa kicked off the sheets and stood up to wander around her new cage. The apartment was small—one room, a kitchen with a tiny stove, a bathroom with only a sink, toilet, and shower… no tub. The colors of the furniture, the couch, the sheets, all spring—bright floral colors. The kind of colors you’d expect to see in a grandmother’s living room.

  A grandmother with a drinking problem, Lisa muttered, pursing her lips at the sight of the couch.

  Everything was so damn tidy that Lisa already felt like a failure. She’d never bother to keep this apartment clean. Glancing over at the kitchen table, there was a wallet with an ID set. Lisa figured it probably already had money in it. She looked at the ID with her photo and name. They never changed your name; she would always be Lisa, just a different town on a different mission. Lisa dropped the ID and wallet on the floor and stepped on them on her way to peek out the windows. Gazing out, all Lisa could see was a massive mountain—just one mountain sitting alone like a disenfranchised king. Lisa did like the mountain; it was green and covered in trees. The mountain seemed like it would sing when it thought no one was looking.

  A singing, thundering mountain, covered in trees, surrounded by children playing, and people chatting. Then, there was Lisa—half alien, clone, confused, mostly human. There were days when she was sure she was at least 98% human. Lisa stood at the window watching the mountain watch her, knowing that Superior Mother expected her to go out among the humans, play their music, sing their songs, and be normal while doing very unnormal things. Breed for The Grey. The idea made Lisa almost feel like cowering.

  A baby to hand over as if she was not flesh of my flesh. Such a raw deal. What are the rewards for compliance? What’s the punishment for refusal? Lisa put her hand against the window; it felt very cool to the touch, almost frosty. Looking at her hand, Lisa could see the window almost starting to crack. Quickly pulling away, Lisa looked at the children playing outside—all in shorts, the adults chatting in tank tops and flip-flops. “The freeze came from me,” Lisa told the window. Maybe she was only 88% human.

  It’s all so orchestrated and complicated in the most basic of ways, Lisa thought about her interacting with the humans Something that was supposed to look enjoyable, like friendship—well it looked enjoyable on TV anyway—Superior Mother took and made it clinical and factory-like. Lisa felt flustered. Still watching the children play, Lisa spotted a small girl watching her. The girl nodded to Lisa, then waved, and the question crept into Lisa’s throat, where am I?

  She stood in indecision for a while, pacing the floor of her apartment and trying to figure out what her next step was. She was a panther at the zoo; Lisa wanted out of her cage, but wasn’t sure what the outside would want of her. Opening her front door, a breeze hit her first. The breeze was light, cool, and smelled like the color green. Lisa knew this was the smell of the mountain that watched over wherever this was.

  Looking at the playground, Lisa wanted to sit and watch the children play. In The Grey, there was no play—there was learning, working, and loneliness. Play was something so foreign to Lisa that she almost felt like she should be against it; not because it was bad, but because she never had it. The laughter of the children, one to another, was almost enough to make Lisa want to run back into her apartment. She wanted to run because she couldn’t understand why Superior Mother would take such joy away from their daughters. Why would Superior Mother not allow the daughters the right to be children? It felt more disgraceful now that this would be done to her own daughter. Lisa’s daughter would never see a playground or have a buddy that looked one hundred percent different than she does. Her daughter would be trained to be all the same and none different—never a chance to run free.

  Lisa found herself standing in front of the playground, gripped with sorry, when a little girl, who seemed around five or six, approached her. The girl’s hair was the color of honey and fell in waves down her back. Her eyes were black—not brown, not dark brown, but black. She was a beauty—so different than the girls of The Grey. We are all the same and none different… like plain yogurt, thought Lisa.

  “Hi?” Lisa hesitated. The beauty beamed at her.

  “Hi back…ha-ha,” the little one giggled.

  “Ha-ha…yup great one,” Lisa thought it was cruel that her daughter would never be given the opportunity to have such beauty. “What state are we in?”

  “Do you wanna jump rope with me?” the beauty smiled at Lisa; it was a sincere smile, a smile that would light up the night, but that wasn’t what Lisa was looking for.

  “Hi, you’re in California…I’m Allison.” The beauty of a little girl had a mother. They both stood side by side smiling at Lisa, and it was too much for her to process. Lisa just wasn’t used to honest smiles. Honesty was a reality she’d never believed attainable in The Grey. To have such earnest beauty greet her with honesty was overwhelming on a toxic level.

  Lisa winced at Allison and her daughter, then stood up and almost bolted for her apartment. Slamming her front door shut, Lisa locked it and buried herself in a blanket on the couch. Hidden safely beneath the blanket, Lisa rocked back and forth trying to convince herself that refusing to breed was her only path. She was sure it was a path to her end. Back and forth, back and forth with a grip on the blanket that she herself did not understand. Lisa would rock until she couldn’t anymore.

  Allison patted her daughter on the back and told her she’d get five more minutes of play before dinner and bath time. Lisa’s manner didn’t bother Allison; she was the apartment manager and had been warned that the girl was a recovering addict with some odd behaviors—non-violent, she was just resettling into ordinary life.

  Allison would play that game if that was the game they chose. She had seen these ladies before. The second Allison rested her eyes on Lisa, she knew it was one of them. Her brother had fallen for one in Japan. They had a daughter together and one day she and the daughter were gone. All he had left were drawers of baby clothes and long helpless nights.

  Her best friend’s cousin had fallen for one—she looked exactly the same as her brother’s woman—and now this one. It was always the same story—they fell in love, she was a mystery, they had a daughter, then one day he came home and she’d be gone. She was nowhere. The daughter was nowhere. There was never any trace of where these women went—or where they came from for that matter—just a gullible, broken man left behind.

  Now, here was another one; she had landed right in Allison’s lap. She had become obsessed with these copy-cat ladies; these twins that traveled the world were Allison’s big foot. She was constantly looking online, showing people pictures, and asking anybody questions. Every lead led to another lead, that led to another lead—all speculation, never an answer. It seemed that in almost every town somebody had seen a woman that looked just like the pictures Allison had of her brother’s heartbreak woman.

  Allison paced the playground a bit, pretending to pick up trash here and there, inspecting things. She was brewing a scheme that would allow her to get to this one. She wanted a snare trap to grab this lady by the leg and demand answers. She would get her answers, there was no doubt in her mind. The only thing to do was be sly and sharp. Walking back to her apartment, Allison felt like a cat who had finally found the rat’s nest.

  Lisa wasn’t the right type of woman of The Grey for these missions. That seed of self-doubt was planted so firmly in her that everything seemed an impossibility. How could she get anything accomplished when the empath in her had a tremendous case of apathy?

  Jacob

  Sharpening knives was meditation for Jacob. He could sit and ponder metal to stone, metal to stone until some of the things in his world made sense. Jacob hadn’t questioned Abigail since finding her asleep in the shed covered in dirt and blood.r />
  Jacob wanted to ask the question what was constantly making his tongue twitch, but his daughter’s face looking at him through her mamma’s skin was answer enough; Jacob’s questions were different now. What’s next? Should he be afraid? Would Abigail and his devil spawn kill again? What should he do? Over and over again, metal to stone, metal to stone. Jacob sharpened his knives and juggled his thoughts.

  Suddenly, Abigail was sitting next to him, looking at his knives with great interest. The same great interest she found in a car horn, a dog barking, a misshapen leaf. Jacob didn’t jump when she appeared out of thin air; he just took notice that a second ago she was still in the kitchen cleaning up the dinner plates.

  “Where’s the knife with the black handle?” Abigail kissed Jacob’s shoulder and pouted. The pout in her lips made Jacob forget everything for a second or two, but the feel of her icy fingers flicked him awake.

  “I gave it to George, a buddy of mine.” Jacob didn’t think twice on that. It was what he did.

  “But, why?” Abigail asked, “It was your favorite.”

  Jacob pursed his lips and realized that she didn’t know about his theory of life. His resolution to all things. “Exactly, I gave it up because it was my favorite, and I was too attached to it. You should never get attached to things.” Jacob rubbed Abigail’s arm, trying his best to melt the frost on her skin. “When I find myself liking something too much, I give it away; that way, I avoid useless sorrow.” Unknowingly, Jacob was the perfect man for a woman of The Grey; his acceptance of her being different and his ideas about loss were perfectly perfect. Such things would make Superior Mother give a proud nod towards Abigail.

  Abigail grinned at Jacob, but everything he said broke her a little. He was already prepared for when they took her and their daughter away, but he didn’t even know it. “Okay, so when are you giving away your truck?” That pouty grin of hers mixed with her attempt at humor helped Jacob feel a little less fearful that he was next on Abigail’s blood bath list.

  “My truck, yeah, that truck is a friend, not a thing…can’t give away a friend.” Abigail felt a pull from her belly; the palmprint wanted to be up against her favorite heat source, Jacob.

  Long ago, when Jacob was a child, he had a rock collection. A collection of all types of minerals, nothing valuable or of interest to anyone but himself. He loved looking at those rocks, rolling them in his hands, and sometimes—when no one was paying attention—he’d stick them in his mouth. There was a flavor to the rocks that was carnal. It stirred an animal sense of man in him. He shared his weird kid secrets with his rocks; the rocks were precious to him.

  Then, a storm came; a flood took over the little house he lived in with his parents and sister. The water rushed through the house, dousing everything they owned with river water. It was such an insult to Jacob; the river he’d fished on, the river he swam in. The river was one of his closest childhood friends, and it had betrayed him. He knew the river couldn’t help it; just like a friend who drinks too much and can’t control themselves. The river was given too much rain and couldn’t control itself. When the river water came, Jacob’s parents were ill prepared, and they ended up on the roof waiting for rescue. Gone was their home and gone were Jacob’s rocks.

  After the flood, he never mourned his room, his bed, the kitchen table where he did his homework. What he mourned were his treasures, those rocks that were company in the late night. The rocks that put flavor in his mouth when dinner was sparse. The rocks he had hand-picked, one-by-one and gotten to know and understand like a loyal pet. He mourned those rocks because they couldn’t be replaced—no others would do. He spent years wishing for those little stones in his hands again, something he could count on to rumble in his pocket.

  The day came when Jacob had had enough of himself and his sorrow. He vowed that he would never get that attached to anything again; if he found himself too pleased by an object, he would promptly give it away. It was best that way. There was no need to hurt and no need to spend his days hunting for something he couldn’t replace.

  Jacob put his hand on Abigail’s belly. Immediately, he felt the stinging heat of his daughter and the press of Palmprint’s hand against his.

  “This one here…she’s something to keep, something to cherish. There is no giving this one away or…” he stopped what he was saying to kiss Abigail’s hand, “or her mamma.”

  Jacob put his face against Abigail’s belly. The heat from Palmprint made Jacob sweat just a trickle, and his skin crawled when the baby touched its nose to his. He ignored his chicken skin reaction. Whatever was cooking inside this gal was his; there was no doubt in his head.

  “I’m going to name her Sunny,” Abigail soothed Jacob’s sweaty forehead with the ice off her fingers—ice that melted instantly from the heat pulsating from the baby. Jacob pulled away, drew a breath from wherever it was he had oxygen left in his body, and said, “That’s perfect baby doll…just perfect.”

  Teresa

  Laying in bed with James, Teresa felt a pain that was wrapped around her neck and wouldn’t let go. She wanted badly to enjoy James’ mouth, hands, every bit of him, but she felt bitter. And, because she felt bitter, she wondered if her kisses tasted so.

  The betrayal of being with another man sat on her head and was unbearably heavy. Teresa wanted to tell him, ‘It’s not you. It’s not about you. It was about them. It’s them; they will come, and they will demand. You can’t give me what they demand.’ How to make James understand that they demand by any means?

  The will of the Mothers must be done… damn the rest of the world. Teresa felt damned herself; there was no way out of this. She sat up and James stretched. He had the laziest stretch that one could imagine. When James stretched, it was with every inch of him and even his muscles seemed to yawn. He stretched like a napping cat, set to nap again.

  What will happen to him when they take me away? Teresa smoothed his hair with her hands. Will he linger around his parents’ home, focused on my return? Will he mourn? Will he move on with his haphazard ways and beautifully built thighs?

  “I want us to live together…” James sat up and put his head in her hands. “Build something together…I want to move in here, get a job…maybe someday be husband and wife.” The word ‘wife’ wasn’t in Teresa’s vocabulary. The word ‘wife’ meant that she’d be around, be his, forever. Teresa knew somewhere in her was the ability to love, but it would never happen. The Mothers would never grant her that luxury. The look in James’ eyes, the almost-to-tears, ‘please love me back’ he had in his eyes made Teresa wish she could stay, but it just wasn’t a possibility. It wasn’t worth the daydream.

  She was a woman of The Grey. She belonged to The Grey. The Grey was a dictatorship, that was for certain, but that dictatorship was carved into Teresa and could not be buffed off. There was no removing the ‘woman of The Grey’ ways from her. There was no such thing as ‘wife.’

  “I need to think about that… really think about that…” Teresa stopped to kiss James’ nose, chin, and lips. “I need time…I am not a woman with suburban daydreams.”

  The look left on James’ face was hope. Those words gave him hope and that was the opposite of what Teresa wanted to do. He scooped hope out of a maybe. Finding no way to speak further without digging some hole she needed a ladder to get out of, Teresa decided to do what she craved. She grabbed James and reminded him that, though she was a grumpy, cold, skinny thing of a woman, she was fierce in bed.

  Grabbing James’ hair and kissing his chest, she reminded herself that she was not to have emotion. She was a beast and would take all she could before she retreated to the sterile home of The Grey.

  James

  She needed to “think about that… really think about that.” Did that simply mean that she needed to twist and turn it in her mind until she decided whether it was a great idea or a horrible idea? Did Teresa already think it was a horrible idea, but did not want to shame him?

  Maybe she needed to think on
him—the essence of what he was and might never be. It struck James that maybe the idea of living with someone was not the core of the issue; maybe he was the core of the issue.

  James recited his last poem in his head. With every line, he planted a kiss on Teresa’s body; with every word, he pushed his skin to hers, ignoring that he always seemed to be in the way of himself.

  Must be hard to sleep

  Being an irrelevant man

  Things he desires

  Never seem to stick

  He sits in bed

  Crumbled like his sheets

  The desire of importance

  Burns in his hands

  Yet he sits

  Knowing he is not

  The winner

  The man’s man

  The guy who gets the girl

  he’s the guy

  that gets nothing

  and swallows it

  because there is nothing left

  to it

  or him

  At home, locked in his room, James was lost in his poetry—and the idea of Teresa’s calves. He almost didn’t hear the buzz of his cell phone alerting him of a text message from his cousin. There was a photo of Teresa at a local bar with a message that read, “Isn’t this your girl?” James didn’t respond to the text. Yes, that was his girl. There was the answer James needed. He wasn’t the core of Teresa’s hesitation. She didn’t need to think on him. He just wasn’t enough for her. Once again, he failed at being all to anybody—especially himself.

  Sitting up in bed, all that crept into James’ mind was what his next move was going to be. What should he do next? Confront Teresa? Keep this secret locked in his cheeks until the right moment to spit it out? What was next?