Greg nudges Janice with his elbow and whispers, “You tell her.”
Janice giggles in response and then looks back over to me with a goofy smile. She climbs to her feet and bounces over to me. She grabs my hands in hers and says, “We’re pregnant!” Then she swallows me up in a hug and bounces both of us up and down as she squeals.
I awkwardly hug her back and manage to say to them both, “Congratulations . . . but how do you know that? You just told me it was too early to tell.”
Greg answers instead of Janice, “The Keepers told us when they did their rounds. I guess they saw the fetus when they scanned her.” Janice takes Greg’s hand as she sits back down next to him. She leans into him with a look of pure joy on her face.
“The Keepers? I can’t believe I didn’t hear them come today. I must have been sleeping pretty hard. They scanned me in my hut without me knowing.” I scratch the side of my head like some confused cartoon character. How did I not hear them? I guess they really don’t make a lot of noise. But it’s still weird.
Janice and Greg are making out now, consumed with the excitement of Janice’s pregnancy. Time to go. “Uh, well, congrats again guys.” As I start making my way back through the jungle, I remember that I need to thank Greg for moving my hut. “Oh, hey Greg. Thanks for moving my hut,” I call back over my shoulder.
All I hear in response is a couple of muffled somethings and a moan. Gross.
THE WRITING’S ON THE WALL
I wake up early, before the sun has risen, and sneak over to the waterfall to fill my water pouch. Kale, the stalker, is sleeping near my hut, but closer to the rock wall. He doesn’t hear me leave or hear me when I pass back by on my way to the glass wall. I crouch down next to the glass and dig a hole in the dirt with my fingers. Brown filth gets caked under my fingernails, but I don’t care. I keep digging until I have a big enough hole to hold my entire pouch of water.
I mix in some of the discarded dirt until I have a thick, creamy mud that is just the right consistency to write on the glass dome. And I have enough here to write something really big. This is my plan. Time to start.
I’ll think about the repercussions later.
Each letter I make is bigger than me, and when I finish, my arms ache. I step back to admire my work now that the sun is up. This is what I see: HELP US! FREE US!, but backwards, of course. Behind the words, I see James across the walkway waving his hands in the air and shaking his head. He’s motioning for me to wash the words away before the Keepers see them. I shake my head no.
The gates to the park must have opened because the first groups of people stream in. They crowd around our enclosure and whisper to each other. I muster up the courage to boldly stand there, next to my words, with mud-covered hands. Like Kale said, what do I have to lose?
Then I see what I wanted to see. A young boy in the background is holding up his index finger. It’s glowing blue just under the surface of his skin. I hope that’s a camera. And then a woman wearing a scarlet ball gown lifts her finger high in the air. It glows blue as well. Several more blue fingers light up within the crowd, and I realize this must be a good sign.
It doesn’t take the zoo authorities long to catch on to my bad behavior. Water runs down the glass from some unseen source. It washes away my pleas. The brown mud streaks down the glass like dirty tears, until they are no more. Then, the glass darkens slightly. The public begins to disperse, save for a few with the blue fingers. They must not be able to see into our enclosure anymore.
Across the walkway, James has his hands pressed to the glass. His eyes are roaming the entire enclosure, searching for something he can’t see. I can’t stand here worrying about him, worrying about me. I rush to the pond to wash my hands off before the Keepers come in. I don’t make it in time. They are already heading toward me. One of them has a syringe in his hand with my name on it.
Instinctively, I start to walk backwards, away from them. My hands start to shake and I tear up. Stay strong, I tell myself. You knew this was going to happen. But I can’t stop myself from trying to get away from the two people that will take me away for some unknown punishment.
Janice and Greg appear just outside of the jungle. Janice’s face is ashen. Greg is holding her by the shoulders, keeping her fixed next to him. I’m glad he’s there to protect her from my bad behavior.
They distract me long enough for me to miss seeing the small thorn bush behind me. It drags across my ankle as I tumble to the ground. The taller Keeper without the syringe lunges for me, but Kale jumps in front of me, blocking his path.
He shouts, “Stop! It wasn’t her! It was me! Look!” His hands are covered in my brown mud mixture. It’s even smeared across his face a little.
“Kale, stop it! They know it was me. It’s okay.” Why is he doing this? I am prepared to take the fall for this. It was my idea. I acted alone. “Don’t do this, Kale!”
The Keepers look at each other. The taller man types something into the clear, floating screen in front of him, and then he walks away.
I instantly feel relief. I can breathe again. I look back over to James’ enclosure. He’s still waiting next to the glass, trying to catch a glimpse into our enclosure. Our section of the dome is still tinted.
Kale grabs my hand and drags me to my feet. He wrenches me close to him as the taller Keeper returns. He also has a syringe.
One for each of us. “No! It was me!” I try to move away from Kale.
He pushes me further behind him. “Don’t listen to her. It was me! She didn’t have anything to do with it!”
The back of my head hits the glass dome with a thump. Kale smashes the rest of me against the wall with his arms protectively out to his sides. I can’t see around his muscular frame or over his shoulders. “I’m sorry,” he whispers to me. The pressure his body is putting on mine is suddenly lifted as he crumples to the ground.
I look back up from his unconscious, fallen body and see the second syringe coming toward my neck. I squeeze my eyes shut as the needle pierces the tender skin below my jaw.
MY DEATH
I’m standing outside my back door, looking into the kitchen, while the night’s shadows keep me hidden. My mother is rummaging in the refrigerator when the phone rings. She takes her time shutting the refrigerator door and walks across the kitchen to answer the call.
She says, “Hello,” in a singsong way.
Her face falls. She drops the phone by her feet and stands there, not moving.
My father rushes into the room and asks her, “What’s wrong, Maggie? Did you drop something?”
My mother doesn’t answer. She just stands there unmoving and unseeing.
He reaches down and picks up the cordless phone that’s lying next to her bare feet. “Hello?” he says into the phone.
He looks at my mother, who still hasn’t moved. Someone speaks to him on the other end of the line. “Oh, hey Phil. Accident? Where? You’re there now . . . Is she okay?” he asks. “Dead at the scene. What hospital did they take her to? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Thanks.” He swallows hard and places the phone back in the cradle. It must have been my father’s police friend, Phil Landry. They’ve been good friends for as long as I can remember. He was always at family bar-b-ques and most of my birthday parties as a child. It makes sense that he would be the one to call.
I reach out to open the door to the house, but I can’t do anything except be where I am. I have no body. No hands. No arms or legs. No eyes to shut out what I’m seeing. No throat or mouth to gasp when I realize this.
I see my mother collapse to the tile floor. She slides against the wood cabinets on her way down. And then she erupts. Sobs rake her body as my father tries to helplessly comfort her. She hits him and tells him to get away from her. He’s stubborn and keeps trying to hold her, but she keeps on pushing him away, over and over again.
Just when I feel like I can’t stand another second of this, everything flashes white.
***
First I hear the music; slow
, sad, mournful music. Then, I hear crying while my father talks about what a wonderful and neurotic, or wonderfully neurotic child I was. His hair is combed perfectly, and his black suit is pristinely pressed, but his hands are shaking as he recounts the time I got lost at a theme park when I was a child.
“There are so many adjectives to describe Emma. She was courageous, resourceful, funny, sarcastic, determined, hardworking, and loving—just to name a few. I’ve never known a woman or a child like our Emma. I remember when she was eight years old, and her mother and I took her to a theme park for her birthday. She was so excited to ride everything. Some things she rode with us, and some she rode alone because she either wanted to or because we were too scared to go with her. She was never afraid to do things on her own.
“After she got off one of the rides, she took a different exit than the one where we waited. She got lost.” My father lets a small chuckle escape, as he remembers the family trip gone awry. He says, “Emma found a woman that worked at the park and demanded that she make her own announcement over the loud speaker. She said over the P.A., ‘Mom. Dad. This is Emma and I got lost. I’ll be waiting for you at the ice cream stand next to the Ferris wheel. But don’t worry, I paid for my strawberry sundae with my own money.” My father’s voice catches as he tries not to cry in front of the rows and rows of people seated at my funeral service. Some of them laugh at the cute story. Some of them cry. Some of them do both.
He finishes his speech with one more thing. “And because Emma was courageous, resourceful, funny, sarcastic, determined, hardworking, and loving, we are comforted in knowing that wherever she is now, she is doing well. She will be missed more than words can express, but we will always remember the life in her.”
I’m glad he doesn’t know that I’m actually not doing well. I have a bad attitude, and I’ve felt like giving up more than once. His words of praise are too good for me. I feel so ashamed as I look at his sad face and then over to my mother’s.
My mother is sobbing in the front row with an empty seat next to her, one that my father is headed toward as the funeral director takes his place at the podium. She has dark circles under her eyes and peeling finger nail polish. She’s lost without her only child.
My family surrounds her in the next three rows and my friends occupy the rows behind them. There are a few people I don’t know sprinkled throughout the room. They are probably my parents’ co-workers and acquaintances, here to show support.
They all look so sad.
I want to scream at them, “I’m not dead! I’m here!” but I can’t. I don’t have a mouth. I don’t have a voice.
Another flash of light.
***
My parents are fighting about a coffee cup that wasn’t put back in the proper cabinet. It’s a fight about nothing.
Another flash of light.
***
It’s dark, and I’m at the end of my parents’ bed, watching them while they sleep. They are as far apart as possible with their backs to each other. My mother is awake. She’s looking at my framed picture on her nightstand. She’s silently crying, while my father is unaware in his unconsciousness.
***
This time after the flash of light, we are in an office building. My mother and father sit across from one another with bitter expressions. A man in a fancy, pinstriped suit sits next to my mother. Another similarly suited man sits next to my father. Divorce papers sit between them. They have already signed them.
I feel sick. So much was ruined when I died. Over what?
A text.
BACK TO THE PRESENT IN THE FUTURE
My body and mind feel broken. I slowly open my eyes to see blinding, white light all around me. I groan as I prepare for another onslaught of disturbing images of what was lost and what was ruined. But I realize that I’m able to blink. I force my eyes to focus on something other than white.
I panic as I find that there’s only white here. It’s consuming me. White . . . only white.
Finally, I manage to roll my head to the other side and see Kale facing me. His eyes are haunted as he stares back at me from a large, white reclining chair. It’s like a dentist’s chair with restraints, but sleek and futuristic looking. There are no buckles on the restraints or hinges on the chair.
Instinctively, I jerk my hands up, but they don’t move.
This is all my fault. Kale didn’t need to see whatever it was he saw. He shouldn’t be strapped to that chair next to me. “I’m so sorry,” I whisper to him, as I fight back tears of guilt.
He whispers back, “Are you okay?” Am I okay? How can he even care about how I feel after what I just caused him to go through? But I can see the concern growing in his eyes.
A man clears his throat, interrupting my answer to Kale. I roll my head forward and look around the room to take everything in and find whoever made that sound. “Dick.” I groan when I see him.
“It’s good to see you too, Emma. You as well, Kale.” Dick cheerfully welcomes us. His hair is extra shiny today.
I twist my hand over in the restraint and give him the finger with a sickly, sweet smile.
“I see that you enjoyed your little visit home. Well, this is just a friendly reminder that should you choose to disrupt the public again, we will be forced to return you to your original fate. Death. And I would hate to see you go.” He takes out his tiny notepad from his jacket pocket and flips it open.
“I see here that the two of you haven’t mated yet. I would recommend that you make that happen soon. Should you fail to produce an offspring for the facility, protocol says that you will be transferred to another enclosure. Remember what I told you about those places, Emma David.”
Kale asks Dick, anger evident in his voice, “And what will happen to the baby once Emma has it? Will you take it? Will you put it in a cage by itself to see what happens? There’s no way we’re going to comply with your demands.”
Dick is all smiles. He doesn’t answer any of Kale’s poignant questions. He simply says, “Well, that is your decision to make, but I promise you, you don’t want to get transferred. They aren’t as nice there as we are here.” He glances at his old-fashioned wristwatch and says, “Time flies when you’re having fun. It was nice to see you two, as always. Goodbye for now.”
Dick walks to the other side of the room and then disappears into the white wall as our chairs inject us with knockout juice. My vision tunnels and the blinding, white light slowly turns into a black void.
OUR RETURN
We wake up on the ground by the rock wall. My head is pounding and I’m nauseous. The clouds in the sky seem to be swirling and shaking above me. Then I see that Janice and Greg are kneeling next to us. They’re waiting for us as we regain consciousness.
Janice scoots closer to me and brushes the hair from my sweaty face. “Are you okay? What did they do to you?” she asks.
I know Janice is just trying to help, but all I want is to be left alone. I don’t want her hovering over me like a mother. I have a mother and she’s not here. So, I push her hand away.
Trying to stand up proves to be impossible. “Here, let me help you,” Janice offers. She tries to support me by putting my arm around her shoulder.
“No. I can do this myself. Please let me do this.” The most I can manage is to push myself up on my hands and knees. The crawl over to my hut is both long and embarrassing, but I refuse to let them help me. My father reminded me that I’m determined (a nice word for hard-headed). I can do this.
I leave Kale alone with Janice and Greg, because I can’t face him again. I want to bury my head in the sand, never to see the light of day again. The guilt is heavy, and perhaps that’s why I can’t rise up to my feet. I silently pray as I struggle forward on my knees; Please God, don’t let it have been for nothing. Please let that protest group see the videos. Please.
The cozy, dark space of my hut welcomes me with open arms as I crawl into its emptiness. I slide down into the hollow. Tucking my knees up into my chest, I f
inally let the tears spill out.
I never expected that to be my punishment. I thought they’d beat me or something. Is a little physical torture too much to ask for?
What do I do now, Dad? What if I’m not courageous like you said? I can’t call for you and Mom over the loud speaker to come get me. I’m stuck here in this hell, I cry to my father who’s long been dead.
And how can I “mate” with someone because a zoo demands it? The fact that I’m even talking to myself about it is completely ludicrous. But if I don’t do what they say, they’ll transfer us to somewhere worse than here. What could be worse than here? Well, I guess I’ll find out because I’m not doing it. Literally.
Suddenly, I can’t breathe. The thin walls of my hut are closing in on me, but at the same time they are protecting me against what’s outside. Kale. Janice. Greg. The Keepers. The public. It’s too much! A loud sob escapes my trembling mouth and my body convulses.
I pull my blanket over my body and head. I want to block out the light that’s trickling in through tiny holes. It provides a small sense of comfort. As I force myself to quiet down, I hear someone approaching. Their footsteps are heavy and erratic, like they’re stumbling around. They fall to the ground with a thud and a groan, as they arrive at the door to my hut. I curl myself up into a tighter ball in an effort to protect myself from whoever is about to pepper me with questions.
I don’t open my eyes or pull down the blanket when they push aside the fabric door-flap and crawl into my space. I know exactly who it is. He still smells like the beach after all this time here. He lies down beside me, molding his body against mine. He wraps one of his strong arms around my shaking body.
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