Page 7 of Of Monsters Of Kings

“I need a job. I’m willing to do a lot for a person who can give me, say, seventy-five dollars a week and provide flexible hours.”

“If you are willing to do a lot, then seek the breeding pens as your employer.”

The breeding pens were an option, yes, and one many women took, including nearly every one of my ancestors. The End drove humanity to the brink of extinction, and a breeding program was developed to ensure diverse genetics. I could agree to become a surrogate and live in the cushy breeding pens, give birth, then get pregnant and give birth again. As many times as I liked until age thirty-five. The testing we all went through at thirteen had shown my genetics were somehow satisfactory. I knew otherwise.

“I won’t pass on my genetics.”

“The females in your line suffer from disease,” he said, detached but not bored. “They wither, as your mother withers now.”

My heart tried to escape my body.

No one knew my mother lived. No one knew of the withering condition of my female ancestors. I certainly hadn’t told his skeleton crew these things. My mind pulsed painfully, squeezing and twisting. I lifted a hand to my temple. Too many impossible things in one day. Too much strange.

“My mother is dead, sir,” I said quietly when I could speak.

“Many possibilities.”

Possibilities. I gritted my teeth, sick to death of the word by now. “I respectfully ask for any employment that you can offer at this time. I am?—”

“Capable and Dependable.”

I stilled at his words and the sudden, swimming intuition that this man was somehow aware of everything his skeleton crew witnessed… without needing to be told a thing. To be a skull was to lead a gang of thugs. To be a skull wasn’t to know everything as this man seemed to. The strangeness of him yelled at me to flee.

“Purposeless,” the skull said in clear disdain. “Grossly unset.”

Did he speak of me? Purposeless. I had a single reason for living and being. How much more set could a person get? His comment jolted me from clawing panic. Fleeing wouldn’t lead to a job. My mother needed me, and I needed my mother more than anyone.

A hand gripped my elbow. Ox’s. Not a loose grip.

I didn’t jump, though I hadn’t heard him approach—if only because the eeriness of this interaction had me in a numb daze.

“Did you move my cleaning cart?” I asked him. “Where’s Frank?”

“And now she loses her mind,” the skull sneered.

“You will leave now.” Ox guided me from the skull’s room, and there was no choice about it.

“B-but we were talking,” I babbled. “He didn’t answer about a job.”

“He did. You’re grossly unset and purposeless, didn’t you hear him? There’s nothing he detests more.” Ox nudged me toward the stairs. “Go.”

If the skull wasn’t convinced of my purpose, I just needed a minute, tops, to fix that. I rested a hand over Ox’s. “I can’t leave empty-handed, Ox. Do you see?”

“I see, yes,” said the man, surprising me. No, he wasn’t just a man. He was a man in a skeleton crew ruled by an all-knowing skull. I shouldn’t forget that. This man was a thug, no matter what he could see.

Never-the-less, I replied, “Then I can return to speak with him?”

He glanced at the skull’s door. “How curious that I hesitate when there is but one thing to do.”

Ox returned his focus to me without warning. He whipped out his hands to hold my face still, and our gazes locked and held.

I couldn’t move. I couldn’t blink. I couldn’t look away.

My focus wanted to slide away, but Ox had locked up my body somehow. A scream built inside as his eyes began to occupy more and more of my awareness. His irises held every imaginable color and none at all. They were everything and nothing—beady and blazing.

The skeleton’s eyes were utterly and monstrously empty.

He whispered, “I see some. He sees all.”

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