What I've seen... It reels my mind. Translates into a weft and warp that I try to weave into a coherent story. A tale of greed crisscrossing with the unimaginable. Of going past a point of no return. Everything past this will have us desensitized, willing.
I walk up the stairs, lost in this new recognition. New memory. safe house mother hasn't replaced the hall bulbs yet. I turn to my door when I'm yanked and pushed against the wall. A dry sandpaper hand suffocates my mouth. He hisses, “Don't you dare honey.”
It's old corpse-like man, surprisingly strong and forceful.
There's an airless moment.
“You delicate, exquisite thing. Simply exquisite.” His tone enunciating every syllable, every “s” sound.
I stare wide-eyed. Blinking fast and quick, my only form of defense.
I feel a tip of knife at my throat, the blood coursing right under the barrier of skin.
“I like young precious things.” He removes his hand from my mouth, trails a finger down the center of my neck, down my shirt, to my sternum. Waits, like a punctuation.
“To add to my collection.” His finger traces from my sternum to my stomach. And on.
No, no.
“So young, so small and thin.” It grazes me down there, tracing the vulva's line from the top to the bottom over my pants, that spot of penetration.
I freeze. I don't know if I should transport into the land far away or somehow fight. His grip and push overpowers, walls me in. I can't see anything, there's nothing to distract my eye with. Just his face like char, his reptilian eyes. The snarl through the words. I could yell, but he'd slit my throat so cleanly. I know he can cross that line easily without hesitation.
His finger reaches under and rests on the second hole. Pushes in through the fabric. He has a pulse of my anus. I'm weeping silently.
“I'd like to bleed you too. Taste it. Know what you're made of.”
I'm falling, turning. Going into an inky gloom.
“Like the Zeus and Venus.” He watches my eyes. Feels me down there. For reaction. For a cue. The beginning and end.
My face remains blank. I roll to a gummy form of surrender, neither here or there. Stuck to now.
“Are you the one.” He stares, but doesn't find any trifle or iota. Pauses. Quickly pierces the skin on my neck with a flick of his wrist. A sickle on my neck. And throws me on the floor before going into his room.
He is a dupe. The nark in this house, waiting to search me out. The one. If he finds me, he finds the last trace of this journey, this yearning. And they're so rapacious, so carnivorous to find it. To kill it so nothing can be fertilized.
He doesn't know who she is. It could be me or the young abused woman. We both arrived in the same time frame.
And suddenly I know Dr. M is dead.
I hear a stir in a room down the hall. Crawl into my room and lay on the floor, curl into a circle within myself, my blood crusting.
BLUSHING QUIETLY
A tall, dark, round pillar of steel with a blue seam of light sliding left to right. And a vertical rectangle of red light, roaming from top to bottom.
A line of boys with shaved heads, of different heights and ages standing naked in line. Not skinny, not fat. They range from three years old to about fourteen and the red, puffy birth marks on their hips or thighs are scanned by the red light. There is no fidgeting, no words. All the glib impulse of childhood gone, no flora of thought.
Long tables of young boys eating. My eyes are drawn to a painfully thin, Caucasian child sitting towards the end. He's about eight or nine years old with wispy blonde hair beginning to grow in. What draws me is the old, yellow-green bruise on his eye, his sunken-in posture compared to the strong, athletic backs of everyone else. A curved anomaly in a sea of straight.
A neighbor reaches out and slides his tray of food away, so quick and sly without even a glance. The young boy slides it back, and he's pushed to the ground by another. A gang of four rises, begins to punch and kick. He holds his arms up in a cross to defend, they crumple and break. He curls into a fetal position as the kicks and aggression build to crescendo. He's pulverized before our eyes. Someone takes a steel cup and pounds it into his head over and over. His eyes seal tight, willing it all to stop.
I remember thinking who could take this boy's light away. Why.
Where did the anger originate.
I remember him on my table. How brittle and thin and starved he was.
The blood blushing quietly on white cotton.
“I heard it's contaminated. The house works for most people, but it's been infiltrated.”
I want to hear more. I nod.
“To keep tabs, to find out who helped who.”
“How did you find it?”
“The word's out. Not with the public, just with those who are... so inclined. I walked to it. Said I needed help. That I informed on some bribery scam, something low level. And she took me in.”
“I had a driver.”
“Yeah, he was supposed to deliver it to me, but he wanted out. That's why I had to go to the home.”
“Why?”
“I don't know. Must've felt the heat. He said the next body would be the last. So Dove panicked and sent it with you.”
I'm seeing a fragment of the trace now. “Who's Dove?” I want to know if he's Dr. M.
“That's... private. Not now.” He looks down, begins swelling with regret and sorrow. His fingers rest folded on his lap, trembling ever so, as if crying through his hands.
Then there's the sound of chambered footsteps entering, pausing to decide which stall.
THE WEAK
I realize this is the second point. The time when I decide. The first point was out of curiosity and duty. The second meeting is deliberate, where I make a decision. This is where your life curves, sometimes sharply towards a foreign arena. Or sometimes ever so slightly in a slanted direction off the original.
I start this new branch by agreeing to write about what I've seen on the black box. To inform and tell again. It'll be sent back and printed at home.
“I need to know something.”
His eyes are piqued.
“Is Dove a doctor? Doctor Larren Mavy?”
He shakes his head. “I don't think so... Dove was my boyfriend. A long time ago... Who's Doctor Mavy?”
“I worked with him...” I'm awash in memories of him. Not really memories, but a whirlpool of feelings I had. The hot anger, confusion and fear. Being powerless and tight-lipped. An ounce of compassion.
He's lost in his own memories. “Dove was a technician. No... is. He IS a technician. Who worked at the facility. The machines would break pretty often so he would have to wear a bio-suit and fix them when they were out. He installed the camera behind the visor.”
“Where is he now.” I already know.
“Gone, somewhere. He doesn't answer or return calls...” His voice falters, he knows too. “I'm doing this for him. He was... so... virtuous. Never met anyone like him. He KNEW...” His eyes shine opalescent.
“I'm sorry...” We both know he's dead or close to it.
“I hadn't heard from him in a year, then out of the blue. He told me I had to show the world. That I knew how. He couldn't. He told me I couldn't turn away.” He's in another world.
A heartbeat.
A breath.
“He was always right. I should've stayed, then maybe he wouldn't have gotten into this. But then how can you forget and live with yourself.”
I continue listening. He needs to talk this out.
“He couldn't. That wasn't him... He called them robo-matrons... He said they were steel mothers who would fuck you over a good one. Torch your soul.”
A remember.
“He said he meant everything. Wouldn't do it different no matter what.”
I imagine a man, zipping up a white bio-suit so they can't grow attachments to non-clones. He enters the vast, empty room. He can hear the clatter of cutlery against steel bowls next door. The gallop of swall
ows and gulps. He opens the robo-matron, sees its circuit boards and wiring. He fixes what he needs to, peeks around to ensure the other robo-matron is in the next room with the children. His fingers clench the bug, he's ready to slide it behind the glass with a slip of finger. And this is when his life changes.
Robo-matron announces a code in a harmonized, low, monotone hum. Synthetic vibratory chords in robo-tone. They sit upright on their beds, wearing white t-shirts and shorts. Good, little, human dolls. A male in a bio-suit goes from bed to bed with a tray and needles. Injects serum into their arms quickly, as if he didn't want to be there, as if the whole thing were a grotesque affair. His lumbering figure represents the only human presence in the room. Not rigid, not straight as a rod, but one with points of potential weakness that can be detected by eye. A hint of possible casualness in another situation. A vulnerability in the flick of hand. I wonder if it's Dr. M, but it's not. There's no stoop to the posture.
Most of the children don't bother to watch him, they stare ahead, wait for the flinch then the next code. But I see one with olive skin turn slightly to sneak a look, make eye contact. What did he feel, a chill or warmth. Cold, hard concrete or an opening in the coral. What was he searching for.
He's somehow stunned, experiences a sudden seizure, shaking in place, eyes twirling back. Every bit of curiosity electrified and evaporating. He awakes a moment later with a stone-cold face, shriveling within himself.
Nothing man says the implants hidden behind the red birthmarks zap them when they misbehave or act in such a way that implicates introspection. Aggression is allowed, independent thought and observation are not. Courtesy of the ever-watching robo-matron.
Night. A blue light glowing in the corner. Their bodies writhe during sleep. They moan in pain unconsciously through their dreams, scratch their arms and legs. Clutch their elbows and knees tight against their bodies, like insects attempting to cocoon, wishing they could spout soft thread to cushion their life. Their hollow cries echo in the warehouse of a room while the machine listens diligently.
I believe they're experiencing growing pains instigated from the serums. Nothingman tells me they can grow one from birth to eighteen in a matter of about nine months. I marvel at the idea of flesh stretching, bone calcifying at such a rapid rate. The scaffolding interlocking, nerves wrapping around as if in love. What it could mean for medicine and the injured. For a second I've forgotten about them and what they stand for. What's been done.
It's transporting slowly down an aisle in a dark room. I didn't know they could move. A faint red light in the corner oscillates on and off. The darkness engulfs everything, but you can still see where you are. Metallic cubes line the row on one side and when it glides past a cube, an overhead light activates, shines down into the cube. And I can see inside, past the glass lid.
There's a gelatinous compound, cushiony and immersed in liquid. Holding still with orange flecks suspended in the serene. And at the very center, a flesh-colored seahorse or shrimp-like thing or being, lying on its side, submerged. Crimped and spiraled, snuggled in the gel, the machine sloshing every few minutes or so. Then darkness as it moves onto the next one.
I remember the baby with orange bits stuck in his lungs. This is his story, the beginning of him. He was a throwaway project that didn't meet the quality control. All the ones I saw on my table were the weak. Or still had a spark.
A VOID
She demands angrily, wants to know who put the sponge in her jar. No one bats an eyelash. Dreamy woman was in the middle of pickling vegetables when she decided to take a long break. When she came back she found a sponge in one of the jars.
I don't have the heart to tell her it was me. Her jars, open without lids, were placed haphazardly throughout the kitchen, on the countertop and table, the stove, even in the sink where I was washing dishes. Her approach seemed unsanitary. I wanted to finish washing and didn't have the patience to move it to the floor, the only spot in the kitchen not piled high with dirty dishes or pickling jars.
It fell in there when I reached over to get soap for the small square of sponge I was using. Our supplies are limited so we cut the sponges into quarters and use them one by one. I remember seeing the blood red sponge settle slowly among the bog of cucumbers and herbs in liquid. Trying to squeeze my hand past the opening to fish it out, but not being able to. Deciding to stop right then and walk away from this morass. From her impossible and messy schemes.
A line of dirty, unkempt male prisoners, handcuffed to the wall behind them. Gruff beards, some muscular, others with bellies. Young and old.
A crowd of older male clones, perhaps sixteen or seventeen years old, hard and buff. There are two versions, stocky Caucasian, the one I saw at the river and on my table. And the olive-toned wise one and his twin without the wisdom. Their shaved heads glisten under the bright pans of lights, and they wear the uniform of white shirts and shorts.
The prisoners' faces expose a carousel of human emotions. A grimace, fear, anger, amused boredom. The clones espouse nothing through their impassive expressions as they mill around in a mass on the other side, waiting for it. Waiting for it.
The code is announced. A clone in the crowd knows it's for him, and he moves through the cluster towards the center of the empty space. The first prisoner is unlocked and shoved forward by a man in bio-suit. He doesn't know what to expect, what this is for. Is this a class of some sort filled with twins? He doesn't know he's prey. They go around in anticipation, sizing the other up, the prisoner realizing with each passing second that he needs to fight to survive. He builds himself strong and tall for the inevitable approach. They grapple, wrestle for a few seconds on the white tiled floor when the prisoner's neck is handily snapped to the side. The sweat smears as the clone drags the body to the corner.
The prisoners' faces wave to fear and reticence. The steely clones are no match and they know it. A second code is announced and the next match begins. The two are a muscular ring, hands on shoulders, moving round and round, grunting, pushing, shoving, waiting for the final tumult. This one is stronger, wants to live. Perhaps he thinks he'll be freed if he wins. But there's a commotion in the corner amongst the crowd of clones. Another code is announced and the fight drops. The prisoner stands bewildered and out of his element, feeling bizarre, not knowing what role he's to play. His arms open as if to say, now what.
They form a line to expose the mystery - an overweight, Caucasian clone in the back, sitting on the blinding white floor, choking himself to death. His thick hands a metal cuff on his neck, closing in. A snaky vein pulses on his forehead, ready to explode.
There's a ripple through their body language once they all become aware, as if an awakening saw the light of day. As if something became unstitched within.
He's zapped and goes through the seizure, but it makes his meaty hands grip harder, his breath gasping and gagging, face flushing into a shocking crimson, his body finally going flat as lumber, like a felled tree. Choked to death. They murmur, low and strange and foreign to themselves.
The humans freeze, they can feel a seismic event approaching.
The clones turn towards the each other and begin fighting savagely; biting, clawing, gauging eyes and testicles. Not the clean, efficient kill motions they've been taught. I can't tell which one started it or how it began. It is a clap of switch. The spell has broken, forced them to see, letting loose the confusion and hate and ugly they don't know what to do with.
Robo-matron dictates a code to introduce order, but no one listens. The code is repeated without effect.
They're all zapped at once, sailing to the ground like loose shirts uninhabited by bodies, seizing and sinking into coma.
There's a gravid stillness, the sound and feel of a nightmare ending. Only humans and machines left, everyone observing the carnage before them. The bright red blood spilt on white tile, slipping into canals of grout. The bodies going through the final shakes and descending into a blizzard of sleep. The sonorous, rhythmic breathing of
those still alive, their heaving mountains of chests. And that's when I notice the low dents in the second robo-matron far away by the door.
He leans closely, ear placed gently on the couple's door to hear the syllables of their muffled speech. He's under the spotlight that safe house mom has replaced. I see him on the way to the bathroom and stop mid-step then turn to return to my room, my heart pounding out of me. He puts his crooked, blue finger to his flaky, parched lips when he sees me, as if to say shhh. It's our secret.
He wants to learn if she's the one that worked with Dr. M. If she is, he'll track her every move to learn if the line extends further, if there are others who are helping. His mission is to learn what else they will do, to kill all the points along the way to the very end.
I want to warn her to watch out for him, but then I don't. She wouldn't appreciate it, and she doesn't want to have contact with me. I'm no glutton for punishment. I don't think he'd hurt her if it turned out she wasn't the one. But I worry about misunderstandings that lead him to believe. I worry for her safety and anyone she interacts with. The innocent and the accidents. But it's too much for me to explain, I don't want to get into it, don't want to help someone who chose to ignore me.
“I haven't heard.”
The news undercuts me.
An idea.
“Do you want to...”
“I'm not sure...” I can hear my voice trail off non-committal and out of body. I had planned to move ahead. Not go backwards.
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