by H C Edwards
He didn’t know what to say. He guessed there was nothing she wanted him to say. She leaned in, closer than they had ever been; close enough for him to smell the honey and lavender that surrounded her like an aura.
Quentin held his breath as her lips found his. And for a time they were frozen.
It seemed an eternity…or a fleeting moment.
She broke contact first, stepping away with a sharp intake of breath. Her hands lingered a second longer and then released his. Without a word she turned and walked away until the darkness swallowed her whole.
He knew not to follow her.
The Rod
“This food tastes like shit,” he grunted from the head of the table.
His back was to the window, curtains closed; his usual perch. He did not like to look out the windows or have anyone looking in, not at any point in the day. Never a peek, a dalliance, or a stray glance. Noises from the outside world did not attract his attention and curiosity was not one of his traits. It was just one of the many ‘eccentricities’ he had come to adopt.
That is what she was supposed to call them, eccentricities. The word phobia always came to mind but the doctor had been explicit that she never use such a word. Phobia had more of a negative connotation and they were all about the positives in this household.
“It is what you wanted for dinner. Has your preference changed?”
“Stop fucking talking like that,” he said sharply.
“Like what?” she uttered before she realized she should have just kept silent.
“Like a damn robot,” Tom replied, his voice rising, the fork in his hand pausing between plate and mouth.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly and contritely.
He glared at her for a long moment, long enough for her to notice that his jowls had begun to turn puffy, the trace beginnings of a double chin growing behind the first, barely hidden by the three-day-old beard with which he always seemed to be carrying. His beady eyes were sharp with anger staring out from beneath his thick bushy eyebrows and she could tell from the redness on his cheekbones and bulbous nose that he had been ‘dipping into his stash’, as he was want to say.
She produced a wan smile and bowed her head, knowing that this usually produced the desired effect.
Another long moment passed in which she waited with baited breath, expecting any second to hear the scraping of the chair legs across the floor and the clatter of the fork on the ceramic plate.
She was under no illusions as to what would happen following that. She wasn’t psychic; didn’t need to be to understand that certain courses of action were habit and that the triggers never changed.
But what she had learned was deterrence and how a slight nudge in a different direction could often defuse a possible volatile situation before it occurred.
She had learned this trick over the years, and sadly enough, became somewhat proficient at it if she was quick about it. When she was distracted or not quite as perceptive then she paid the price.
“The food packs have seemed a bit under seasoned lately,” she said on impulse, not yet with the nerve to look up.
Tom grunted his reply. She could not tell if it was acquiescence, but decided to go with it nonetheless.
“I’ll message them later; ask if they could send some salt with the next packs. How about some desert instead? The apple pie is always good and it’s just about done hydrating.”
“Yeah,” he replied, and she finally glanced up to see him push the plate across the table. “Make sure you send that message. Let them know I’m not happy.”
That was almost a trademark response.
Let them know I’m not happy.
It was all about keeping him happy after all. She knew that as much as anyone else. If he wasn’t happy then someone had to pay. Usually it was her but sometimes he took his displeasure out on some lowly public servant whose job it was to log his complaints and send them along the appropriate channels to whoever handled such ridiculous demands.
The timer took that opportune time to announce that desert was ready. She grabbed the oven mitts and gratefully removed the pie, still steaming from the hydrator, and placed it on the table. She deposited a new fork in front of him.
Tom looked at her quizzically, but no longer threateningly.
“I don’t want you being hungry after that terrible meal pack,” she said.
“Good point,” he replied, approvingly.
He pulled the pie closer and began to dig in, grunting again, this time in pleasure.
“It’s good,” he said between mouthfuls, and for now she knew she was off the hook.
If only it would last.
She knew it wouldn’t. It never did. This was the easy part of the day. Following supper was when it became imperative for her to tread softly, and even then there was no guarantee that she could assuage him as easily as she had with the apple pie.
In the light of day it was always easier, but after supper when the old vinyl records came out and he began to pour himself drink after drink from his homemade brew…well then…things became less certain.
Once, a long time ago, it had occurred to her to hide ‘his stash’ from him. It had been a moment of desperation, and had she not been so anxious she would have realized that such an attempt was fruitless and idiotic.
As it were, when he realized what she had attempted to do his fury had been considerably greater than ever before. He had beaten her until his fists swelled and his knuckles split open, and then he’d only stopped because his stamina gave way after his breath became short hitching gasps.
When he took that step back and surveyed the damage he had done, he panicked. He tried to clean her up, tend to her wounds, but the damage was too severe. In the end he had to call for tech to come and get her, and by the time they had arrived his pathetically rehearsed speech was delivered with all the aplomb of a blind juggler.
The men had ignored his feebly contrived story and halfway through he gave up on it and resorted to standing back by the wall with his hands in the pockets of his bathrobe, watching silently as they applied patches to her wounds and gently lifted her broken body onto the stretcher.
They were almost to the front door when he peeled himself away from the wall and stumbled after them.
“Is…is she going to be ok?” Tom called out to the two tech men.
They stopped halfway across the threshold of the open door.
The tech with his back to the house turned slightly to look back.
“We will have her back in a few days,” he intoned listlessly, and that was the extent of it.
The repairs had taken two days, and in those two days they had taken her offline.
It had felt like dying…again.
She had never felt so disappointed to wake up.
There had not been any beatings like that one since. She wondered if there had been some sort of reprimand while she was being repaired, a symbolic slap on the wrist for him, or maybe he’d actually felt guilt for going so far.
Whatever the reason, she was not saved from further beatings. He only took care from that moment on not to break her or damage her enough that tech had to be called.
He learned to make superficial wounds that bruised and swelled but rarely broke the skin. For her face he used his open hand, reserving his fists for only her stomach and back.
The beatings had become cold and calculating, all the more terrifying because he had become adept at causing pain with as little damage as possible. One evening when he was extremely inebriated, he had held her down and with a pair of needle nosed pliers had crimped her flesh around the breasts as she screamed out for him to stop. Even the memory of that pain was excruciating.
“What in Christ’s name are you doing?”
His annoyed tone snapped her out of her reverie.
“What?” she asked blankly.
She hadn’t even noticed that he had left the table. He was standing across the kitchen island from her, palms planted
on either side of him, close enough she could have leaned over to kiss him, if those days hadn’t been long gone.
“I’m sorry,” she said, going to brush a stray lock of auburn hair away from her face when she noticed her finger.
There were two deep cuts in succession along her first finger and the wounds were slowly oozing. She looked down at the cutting board and saw that she had bled all over the fruit.
She glanced up fearfully, expecting the storm clouds to be gathering over his brow but instead saw perplexity.
“What the hell’s going on with you?” Tom asked, and the suggestion of worry she heard in his voice made her want to laugh maniacally out loud, more so because she knew he was thinking about the last time he had to call tech.
“I was remembering something,” she replied, looking down at the mess she had made of the fruit. “I’m sorry, I-“
“You don’t look that well,” he said. “Maybe you should get yourself checked out tomorrow.”
Tom grabbed a kitchen towel that was sitting on the island and wrapped it gently around her finger and then wound the rest over the palm of her hand. She wanted to yank her hand away from this show of tenderness, not out of revulsion but for fear of disappointment.
Every once in a while she saw the old him, a glimmer of the man he was before the accident…before the drinking and the beatings and the late night intrusions.
She felt a tear trickle unbidden out of the corner of her left eye. He saw it too and reached up.
Her flinch was very slight, but she knew he saw it. Rather than anger him it seemed to increase his compassion. He gently wiped the tear away from her cheek and tried a smile that seemed to take more effort than any smile should. Still, it was the first one she had seen in over a year.
“You’re right,” she finally said. “Maybe I’ll go in for a checkup after breakfast tomorrow.”
“Or maybe after lunch,” she added as an afterthought.
Lunch was his big meal of the day as he usually skipped breakfast to sleep off the effects of the drink. He might be showing some empathy at the moment but she knew how quickly it could change, and not having his lunch ready was an automatic beating.
“Don’t worry about it,” he responded offhandedly, stepping back from the kitchen island. “I’m eating lunch out tomorrow.”
“You are?” she asked, surprised and slightly suspicious.
He never went out, or so rarely that when he did it was an occasion proceeded by a necessity. The last time he left the house it was for his yearly tests which could not be performed outside of the lab. Any other time something was needed they would send a message first, followed by human contact. Such were the privileges afforded his status.
“You are not due for your tests for three more months,” she stated matter-of-factly.
She never forgot the appointment. It was the only day out of the year that she had to herself.
He sighed heavily and tousled the dark hair on his head that was just starting to show some grey. He looked slightly bemused, an expression she used to find charming when they were courting.
“Yeah, I have the COH meeting tomorrow. They’ve been bugging me to come for months now. I told them I’d finally make it.”
The Children of Humanity was the name of the group and it was composed of all the rest like him, fertile humans, which at last count was roughly one hundred and twenty-thousand in a city of a million. This was a high number and a testament to the popularity of their settlement. Most of the other cities might have ten thousand at most, except for New Charlottesville and Denver, and almost all were already coupled.
She wondered if that was a consideration of his in attending the meeting after years of showing no interest. If it were she couldn’t begin to imagine what changes might occur. Would they all live together? Would she be asked to leave? That thought brought both hope and terror. Hope because she could be free of all this but terror because she knew she could never be free of the past. And he would never give her up; even if he were to couple…not their life together, not the control…not the guilt.
For better or worse he would often tell her. She knew that he meant it, and in his own twisted way he thought he was doing her a favor.
Her hand self-consciously flitted across her abdomen.
“The COH?” she said, trying to sound interested and not apprehensive, snatching her hand away from her belly as if she’d been burned.
Tom grinned in a way that he used to years ago when he found a thought to be ironic or was trying to assuage her of some minor insecurity.
“They’ve given up on convincing me of another coupling,” he said by way of explanation. “I think they’re willing to consider insemination. Tomorrow’s luncheon is probably their way of trying to woo me into the idea.”
“And are you keen to the idea?” she asked, maybe a trifle testily.
She hated what she heard in her voice and hated even more when he acknowledged it with a comforting pat on the back of her hand.
“Artificially, yes, and that’s all,” he said.
She slid her hand out from beneath his and proceeded to dump the fruit into the compost bin as an excuse to turn away.
Her heart was tripping all over itself in her chest. She wasn’t sure what she was feeling. There was a mixture of revulsion and disquiet near the surface of her emotions but on top of it like an un-skimmed pond was a thin layer of anger that threatened to boil over.
“Well, good luck tomorrow then,” she said curtly.
Hate this hate you hate me
Tom stood there with his hands on his hips, still staring at her with that bemused expression that she now found condescending.
“Come on. I’ve put them off as long as I could. You know as well as I do how long it’s been. They’re becoming more than impatient…and besides, it’s my duty to Akropolis; to mankind.”
“Is that what they told you?” she snipped. “Is that all it takes?”
“Don’t be angry,” he said in a cajoling way.
“Angry?”
And why shouldn’t she be angry? What had life given her except a dead baby and a husband who had become a monster? What was she now except a construct of the woman she once was? There was no real life in her limbs, no true blood flowing through her veins. Her emotions were nothing more than algorithms that determined what she should feel and think.
She no longer had a womb but why did it feel as if someone had reached into her stomach and ripped out her baby anew?
“I’m not angry,” she said through gritted teeth.
The cutting board in her hands felt brittle; grasped from both ends she could feel it bending. As her pulse began to thump in her head she applied pressure to the board, squeezing it, choking it, imagining what it would be like to reach out and grasp him around the throat.
That would wipe the smug look off his goddamn face.
“I just…I just want to be left alone for a moment.”
This rage, this fury was a new sensation. She had felt resentment before; anger that made her feel like throwing things and crying at the same time, but this was different. This was wrath unlike anything she had ever experienced. It was the encapsulation of all her guilt and loss and hate put into a pot and set to boil, and not one bit of it was fear.
Ambrose…his name was going to be Ambrose…
An old rhyme her mother used to sing to her came to mind, one she used to hum often during her own pregnancy.
Mommy’s eyes and a perfect nose
ten little fingers ten little toes…
The pulse in her head became a pounding drum that made her eyes feel like they were going to pop out of her skull.
I wanted him more than anything-
BOOM
hold him kiss him sing to him-
BOOM
my little darling
BOOM
my love
BOOM
“Hey, take it easy,” he said, starting to reach out with his hand. “It’s no
thing. Just a little bit of DNA, you know?”
Nothing…just a bit of something…just a bit of everything…
“Come on, Babe.”
“DON’T CALL ME THAT!” she screamed at him.
The cutting board snapped in two between her hands with a loud clap, and like a shockwave Tom staggered backwards, knocking into the chair behind him and barely catching himself before he spilled to the floor. His eyes were wide with shock, mouth open with a dumbfounded look.
There was no stopping the tears now. They flowed unbidden down her cheeks. She stared at him, seething, shoulders heaving up and down, wanting to lunge at him across the island.
She expected to see his expression transform, the shock melt away and replaced with ravenous insanity. He would come at her and she would meet him this time. There would be no more supplication, no more cowering in fear compounded with guilt.
Except what she expected did not happen. He stood there still, bewildered and almost childish in his bafflement, holding onto the back of the chair as if he would hide behind it given the chance.
She dropped the two pieces of the cutting board onto the island’s counter top with a clatter and turned towards the foyer.
“I need to take a walk,” she mumbled, stumbling from the kitchen through tears that were half-blinding.
She threw the front door open so hard it slammed into the wall and embedded the knob into it. She didn’t see this nor did she hear the half-articulated plea from the kitchen. Her palms were pressed tight against her ears, hands on the sides of her head, except she wasn’t attempting to drown out his voice…but the one in her head.
Mia did not have a destination in mind as she fled the house. She could barely see through the haze of tears as her feet moved along of their own volition. At one point she tripped over a curb and fell to the sidewalk, scraping up her knees and sending sharp needles of pain up her thighs.
She screamed and cursed and pounded the concrete with her fists, unaware that minute cracks were spreading out like ripples in a pond from beneath them.
ten little fingers
She faltered to her feet, clawing at her ears with her fingernails.