by Josiah Upton
I hear the muffled sounds of him speaking tersely, almost bordering on shouting, telling his companion to leave the room. The door opens again and a shirtless Caesar waves me in. Just as I come into the entryway I see a woman, with only a sheet wrapped around her front, tip-toeing down the opposite hall. The smooth skin of her backside is exposed, muscles and flesh and fat moving across bones as she disappears into another room.
My Prisoner screams at me to chase after her, but I refuse, as I always do. Even if a woman wanted to be with a monstrous creature like me, I could never control myself. She would surely not survive. When I died four years ago, the possibility of ever fulfilling such desires died with me. In that regard, I will be forever alone. I close my eyes tight for a few seconds, then open them to find Caesar smiling at me. “Not bad, huh?”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw you staring at my friend. It's okay. You know a good thing when you see it. I'm sure a young stud like you is gettin' play from all the hotties at school. Am I right?”
More confusing nonsense. “Right,” I answer.
I turn to walk towards the living room, where our last deal took place, but I'm stopped by Caesar's hand clutching my shirt. His smile has disappeared. “You're supposed to set up an appointment, not just show up. If you can't tell, you've caught me at a bad time.”
When I last met with him, on the worst day of my Hybrid Reanimate life, he said he would see me again in a month. I took that as a set appointment, and so here I am – with his fingers gripping my shirt sleeve tightly. I imagine the wet snapping sound of them being pulled from their knuckles. The sooner he lets go, the better.
“I was here on the 1st of September, and it's the 1st of October today. Exactly one month later.” His expression doesn't change. Frustration fuels my Rage. “And you gave me a one month supply.”
“Yeah, I get it,” he snaps, letting go of my shirt. “I can read a calendar, and I can count. But I never got a call from Gibbs, so I assumed he had turned down my business proposition.”
“Proposition?”
“About going in together, for distribution in Pueblo?” Oh, that. Gibbs couldn't have turned it down because I never mentioned it to him. I'd forgotten all about it. It was pushed from my mind by the precarious events that followed that day. But I can't tell Caesar that, so I keep my expression blank. “You really are stupid, aren't you kid?”
I've had enough of this man. I want to push him. I want to smash his face like I did Dalton's. But Dalton didn't own a pistol, and though I don't see it I assume Caesar keeps his firearm close by. Getting shot won't help me over to Genny's house any sooner. The mental image of her calms me down. Time to get back control, and think of an excuse.
“He's still considering your offer. He wants to see if word will spread and bring in more customers. He needs another month for further...” I search my mind for a specific term I once read. “Market analysis. That's what he called it.”
“Market analysis?” Caesar's glazed grin returns, and he starts to chuckle uncontrollably. “I never thought that old cripple could be such a professional entrepreneur.” The word “cripple” doesn't sit right with me, as if it's an insult. It makes me feel... defensive, though I don't know why. It was directed at Gibbs, and I have no personal stake in our relationship. “Well, when his team of experts are done with their research, tell him to get back with me on that. Market analysis...” He continues to laugh deliriously as he shuts the door and walks down the hall.
The nearer we get to the dark living room, the more of that woman I can smell. It mingles with the scent of garbage and lit candles and that stuff Caesar was smoking last time I was here. I see crumpled up clothes on the floor by the couch, and cringe at the thought of what the two were doing just before I arrived. The mass of bottles and plastic bags are missing from the coffee table, perhaps to not give his guest the wrong impression. Or, so that she won't steal any of it. Caesar reaches under a couch cushion and immediately pulls out the bag of pills. Maybe he was expecting me after all.
“Five large again?” I ask as I pull the wad of money from my pocket, proud of myself for remembering the lingo.
“Plus another two hundred, for interrupting my leisure time.”
I wait for him to start laughing again, but his face is stone-serious. That isn't fair. I want to protest. Actually, I want to do much more violent things, but that would make this the last Mortetine I would ever get from him. I need that medication, so I need to play by his rules. In this situation, Caesar is the one in control. I count my money, and realize he's taking everything. “That's all I have. Can I at least keep five for the bus ride home?”
He sighs heavily and scratches his head, looking between me and the bag of drugs. “Just the five grand is fine. I'm over it now. In fact, I'm kinda glad you showed up. She wouldn't stop talking, kept ruining my focus.” I recount the money and hand it over, but he keeps the bag. “Gracias. Hey man, you want a beer?” No. I just want to get what I came for and get out of here. I'm losing time. But before I can think of an excuse to leave, he walks away to the kitchen. “All I've got is Montana Mist. Is that cool with you?”
That must be a brand of beer. I've never had one before, or even seen one in person. All I know about it is from my basement books – a bitter beverage that increases body fat and blood-alcohol content, which impairs judgment. As a Hybrid Reanimate I require hydration, but it's usually obtained by water or the blood in my food. A beer would seem unnecessary.
But, if I am a new Zaul, I need to try new things. That's what humans do. And the advertisements I found in magazines always depicted humans with beers in their hands, laughing and enjoying life. “Uh, sure. I guess that's fine with me.”
“Now we're talkin'!” Caesar calls back to me.
While I wait for him to return my nose's attention is caught by the mystery woman just down the hall. My Prisoner makes a ruckus. I move away from there to the other side of the living room, where the air is lighter, and Caesar's assortment of anti-Ugger evangelism hangs. My eyes are automatically drawn to the picture of the bloody Hybrid Reanimate lying in the street. Like beer, I've never seen one in person. The only one of my kind that I've met is myself. The rest are locked in containment while I live in relative freedom, just because I'm intelligent and controlled enough to pull off the deception. This thought, and the Hybrid Reanimate's dead eyes, give me an unsettling feeling inside. I can't look at it anymore.
I shift my focus to a collage of black and white text, pieces of clipped newspaper, and Caesar returns with a metal can in each hand. I take one, and am grateful it's already opened because I can't figure out how the contraption on top would work. “I see you've found my little collection. It's all about Ugger news. Sort of a hobby for me. I used to have this posted up at work, but the APA bigwigs had me take it down after their last inspection. Said it was sending 'the wrong message'. Pfft, idiots.”
He takes a loud slurp from his beer. I bring mine to my mouth, but stop when I smell it. The odor emanating out of the can is disgusting. It reminds me of when a skunk wanders into the bushes outside my basement. If I were to eat a skunk, I imagine that's how beer would taste. I can't drink this. I hold the can idly, hoping Caesar won't notice my aversion to it. And he doesn't, as he is wrapped up in his news collection. He leans in and points at a specific article, one that's crisper and less discolored.
PROPOSED BILL SEEKS TO END GUARDIANSHIP PROGRAMS,
MOVE ALL HYBRIDS INTO CONTAINMENT FACILITIES
“What are guardianship programs?” I ask.
“Parents who are allowed to keep their kids at home after they turn Ugger. It's kinda rare because the fees for guardianship are so damn expensive. You see more of it up in the Northeast, where most of the moneyed live. Stupid Yanks.”
I've never heard about this until now. Not in school, not from Gibbs. The possibility of parents keeping their undead children with them brings that aching feeling back. Did my mother and father consider this optio
n? Did they just not have enough money for it? I find that hard to believe, with all the cash they send Gibbs for food and shelter and Mortetine. If they can afford that then they could have afforded paying a fee to keep me home. They simply must have not wanted a monster child in their everyday life. This realization is too much for me to handle. I start to feel dizzy as Caesar continues ranting.
“But you know me, I think this bill is a step in the right direction. The only issue I have is that they'll probably ship all those freaks out to us, being as we're the number one containment county in New America. It'd be so much easier if we lined them all up and shot them. Doesn't that make more sense?”
“I-I don't know, I...” Normally such words would incite a spike in my Rage, but I'm still too busy agonizing about my parents, over how much they must not want me. If not them, then who? No one. No one will ever want me.
“You don't know, man? It's common sense! I got a building full of those things crawling around like cockroaches, eating up tax dollars and every last ounce of my sanity... and some rich sickos choose to keep them as pets? Just because these freaks share the same body as their dead kids? It's messed up, man. It shouldn't be like that. What do you do when you see a cockroach?” Caesar stomps his foot hard on the floor. “You squash 'em! Right? And let me tell you something else...”
My Rage finally catches up, and the hopelessness surrounding my parents' lack of love takes away any good reason to resist. I could squash Caesar like a cockroach. I could rip the jaw right from his mouth and stop his endless tirade. I could consume his flesh. I could break down that bedroom door and take from that woman what I've always denied myself. I could satisfy all three symptoms of my condition at once.
The savage cackle from my Prisoner echoes throughout the corridors inside me. He will always be there. No amount of makeup or training or silly necklaces will change that. I was a fool to think that having a pathetic reputation among a bunch of teenage meat sacks would change who I really am. Why does any of it matter anymore? If my own parents can't accept me, then why should I care about what anyone else thinks?
The only thing that stops me from unleashing is the house next door. In it is a human girl who is expecting me to show up, who actually wants me to be there. As long as I have that, a slight possibility of light and warmth, then I can trudge along in this cursed life filled with want and pain and rejection. Because of that determination, nothing is more important than leaving this vile man to stew in his hatred, and arriving at the Grest house without blood and bits of flesh on my clothes. I don't wait for him to find a stopping point in his ranting. There probably won't be one.
“Excuse me, Caesar,” I interrupt, “but I have to go. Could I have that Mortetine now?”
I catch him mid-word. His mouth is in the shape of an O, which morphs into an awkward smile on his prematurely aged face. He looks back at the wall, gulps down the rest of his beer and throws the empty can behind him. “Yeah, man. Sure.”
Caesar marches past me, not making eye contact, back to the kitchen, where he must have left my purchase. He returns and hands me the bag, his disposition much different than it was just a minute ago. I follow him to the house's entrance, still pondering what had just happened. “I'll see you next month,” he says with the door open and eyes empty. “Make sure Gibbs calls me.”
“Yes, I will. Once the market analysis is complete.” I expect him to laugh again, but he only gives another awkward smile before disappearing behind the shut door. I don't understand. One minute he's offering me beers and going on passionately about Hybrid Reanimates, and the next he's... I can't say angry, but it's something else negative. I can only guess. I'm still new to reading human emotions, of which there are too many, and too difficult to read.
And then I suddenly realize I'm devoting a lot of time to analyzing Caesar Ortega, a man I detest. A man who hates my kind and would kill me if he knew my secret. The black and the emptiness from him seems to emanate out onto the porch where I stand. I have another thirty days of freedom from this before I have to return. Thirty days that I can start right now by seeing my friend next door.
Chapter 19
“Zaul!” I am greeted by the plump and bearded face of Gordon. I'd forgotten how fleshy he was. He's wearing a bright red shirt, and altogether reminds me of that Merry Christmas man. He seems to be smiling just as cheerfully. If my Prisoner's ravenous pleas weren't ruining the moment, I would say Dr. Grest's appearance at the door was a welcome sight. “Come in, come in!”
Once inside my immediate reaction is to look for Genny. My nose can't get a clear track of her present location, only the traces left around the house from her day-to-day presence. Something is interfering with my nostrils, a pungent odor traveling out from the kitchen. The dinner that I will be forced to choke down. I really wish I could skip that part of the evening. Gordon walks around me and to the foot of the stairs, hands on his hips. “Genny! Zaul is here.”
“Okay! Tell him to come up!”
Gordon hesitates, his eyes carefully moving between me and the top of the stairs. I can't tell what he's thinking, but it must have something to do with a teenage boy going up to his daughter's room, unsupervised. He should be concerned, but not for those reasons. “Sweetie, why don't you just come down here? Dinner's almost ready.”
“We'll come down in a minute, just send him up!”
“Um, okay,” sighs Gordon, too quiet for Genny to hear. He turns to me, eyes appraising, like on the porch that first day I met him, when he decided to trust me enough to give a ride home. Will he trust me now, with his daughter? “Zaul, uh... Genny's room is upstairs. First on the left.” He starts to walk to the kitchen, but stops and adds with a serious expression, “Dinner will be ready very soon. I'll come tell you two when it's time to eat.”
“Yes, sir.”
Once he disappears my eyes go back to the top of the stairs. A strange mixed feeling of excitement and fear comes over me, like I won't know what to expect when I go up there. I'm so used to being trapped underneath the house, in isolation. What will a human's bedroom look like? What will Genny's look like? Should I even be going inside of it? It feels taboo. But when I think about it, my very existence is taboo. Whatever I do, it's wrong because I'm the one doing it. The Real Me would never be accepted by society. Luckily, I'm the Fake Me today.
I walk up the stairs, looking at the pictures hanging on the walls, of Genny at various ages. She seems to be getting older the higher I go up. I also see a few pictures of a younger Gordon standing next to an unfamiliar woman, which must be his dead wife. She is very attractive in the picture, and my Prisoner squeals at the sight of her. This makes me feel utterly abhorrent. I don't linger on the image.
Genny hasn't mentioned anything about her mother, though conversation has been nearly nonexistent until this morning in the office. And I'm not sure what I'll say if she asks about my parents, they're practically dead to me as well. But at least she has her father. When I see Gordon, that's how I picture I would want my own father to be.
The older Genny gets in the pictures, the less she seems to smile, and the darker her clothes become. It's like something is sucking the life out of her as the years have gone by. The last one I see at the top of the stairs is what she looks like now, dressed in all black and almost seeming to scowl. In fact, other than this morning, I don't think I've ever seen her smile. Is her life really that miserable? It couldn't possibly be worse than mine. It's probably just that teenage angst Gibbs was talking about.
On the second floor I can smell her more clearly. Her room is indeed the first door on the left, where light and her scent and the slow hum of music crawls out to me. Inside I see her back as she sits at a desk, her head slowly bobbing along with the rhythm. I find myself where the hall's hardwood meets the carpet of her room, but stop there, somehow unable to go any further. Or, at least not until I announce my presence. My knuckles rap sharply on the door, and she looks over her shoulder, giving me that smile missing from her pict
ures. “Geez, how long does it take you to go up some stairs?”
“I was looking at your pictures on the wall. Your mother was very pretty.”
“Oh,” Genny says, looking down. “Yeah, I guess. She died from cancer when I was four. I don't really remember her that well.”
Our eyes meet, and panic strikes me, at the thought of her asking about my parents. I'm still aching from the recent notion that they only care for me as far as I'm alive and hidden. I shouldn't have said anything. Her mouth opens again, but before she can speak I take a step forward. “May I enter?”
“There you go, talking weird again.” She rolls her eyes and chuckles as she rises from her chair, then twirls her hand as she bows down low. “I grant you permission to access my chambers, forthwith.” I stare back at her, not sure if that was a yes or a no. Maybe if my mind was the way it was before I became a Hybrid, I might be able to understand her lofty speech. “That means come in, buddy. Shut the door, too.”
Closing the door doesn't seem wise, for many different considerations. “Are you sure? Your father seemed uncomfortable with me being up here in the first place.”
“Yeah, well... most dads think letting a boy within ten feet of their teenage daughter will automatically make them a grandfather. Yet everyday I come home from a school full of boys and my womb remains uninhabited. He's going to worry no matter what.”
I step in and close the door behind me. Something triggers inside, like when I was in Vicky Womack's office for the first time, and my primal instincts realized I was blocking the potential prey's only escape. I don't like feeling such things, especially in regards to Genny.
I take my focus off her and look around the room. Like Caesar's, her walls are covered with decorations of pictures and text, though not of the same hate-filled sentiment. Most are unfamiliar faces and groups of people, some holding musical instruments and posing as if something important is about to happen. I also see a few drawings by hand pinned here and there, black and white illustrations depicting strange things, grim figures and unhappy faces. “Did you do these?”