Page 29 of Calico Descending

“Are you sure?” I can’t take my eyes off the hole in the wall, imagining me on the other side, the source of curiosity for spying eyes. “I mean, no one gets out of the experiments, right? Everyone has to participate.”

“Ask her yourself, if you don’t believe me. But guaranteed?” Neela crosses her arms over her chest. “That bitch will be in the barracks before any one of us gets back.”

“Does Medusa know?”

“Doubt it. She doesn’t believe in special favors.”

The horn blares, sounding the end of lunch, and all the girls scatter out of the bathroom, but I’m not so anxious to leave. It means I’m to report to the lab.

Back flat against the wall, I allow one of the medical technicians to record my height. “Up a half an inch from when you first got here.”

But down about ten pounds, too, and it’s not like I had much meat on my bones to begin. I follow her into one of the examination rooms in a routine I’ve become all too familiar with. Handing me a gown, she smiles, as if she hasn’t done this a dozen times before, as if she doesn’t know what happens when I slip this gown on and she closes the door. Accepting the garment, I stand in the room and wait until she leaves. A low-lying vibration hums in my chest, sending a quiver just below my skin. At three times a week, I should be used to this now, but nothing can make me immune to these studies.

A little over a month ago, I walked in for a checkup, and the doctor told me I was to be sent to the incinerator within two weeks time. It was only after the two-week timeframe, when I suffered a panic attack in the hallway and blacked out on the way to what I thought would be my final check up, that I was told it was nothing more than an observation. To see how my stress levels affected my reproductive and menstrual cycles.

They toy with us here because they can. Because there is no regulatory entity that tells them what they do here is wrong or unethical.

We’re savages to them. Animals, basically. The experiments they perform on me, in their eyes, are no different than them being performed on a rodent who happens to talk.

Slipping out of my uniform and into my gown, I wait to hoist myself up onto the examination table, eyes on the stirrups that spread me open for the doctor. Before I arrived here, I’d never been looked at down there by anyone, especially a doctor. I didn’t understand why that part of my body was so important to their studies of finding cures. It isn’t, really. As I understand, the third generation serve as nothing but a means to observe and create predictive models of how the Dredge will affect future generations. Which in turn, feeds their quest for the cure.

My role is so insignificant here, so obscure, I don’t even matter.

The door clicks open, and I turn to see Doctor Samuels holding a file in his hand that has grown thicker with each passing week. He adjusts his glasses and smiles, taking a seat at the end of the examination table, but all I can think about are his hips railing into Shoshanna’s behind.

“C’mon now, up you go. We don’t have all day.”

My stomach twists as I climb up onto the table and lie back, setting my heels in their proper place on each rest. Gathering my hands atop my gown between my thighs does little to shield what is completely exposed to him.

“Any changes from last week?” he asks, slipping on a pair of gloves that he snaps against his skin, reminding me of those slapping sounds from earlier.

“None.”

“No bleeding, pain, difficulty in urinating.”

“No.”

“Any pressure, or discomfort, while sitting, or performing physical activity?”

“No.”

“Good. Now, let’s have a look.”

The moment he says the words, my heart picks up speed. I know what’s coming. Pokes. Prods. And then the injection, which is the most excruciating of anything. The pain is so intense, it often causes me to black out, and the hours that follow are miserable. Worse than whatever they do in the surgical ward, where they put me to sleep first.

“Doctor ...” I interrupt, and immediately regret it. I don’t know how to formulate the words that beg to spill from my lips. Ones that leave me feeling both sick and hopeful. I’ve spent the last hour imagining a week when I wouldn’t have to come in for these checkups.

“Yes.” The tone of his voice is both expectant and perhaps a small bit irritated. “What is it?”

“I .. um.” What is it, Cali? What do you say? I saw you violating another girl. I understand you made a deal with a girl. I want to be used, so I never have to lie on this table again.

“Well, what is it, girl? I have other subjects waiting on me.”

“Is there … some way I can be … excused from this?”

His brows furrow, and he tips his head. “Are you not feeling well today?”

I could tell him no, but I’d be right back in here next week. “I, um … that’s not what I mean.” I wish I could set my feet down while I do this, because there’s something quite undignified about propositioning an older man with my private parts flashing in his face. It makes my stomach twist, to imagine his wrinkled face, set below graying hair, twisted up in pleasure while he slams his hips into me, and I have to school my face to keep from grimacing. “I saw you with Shoshanna.” The words tumble out of my mouth before I can stop them, and when he lifts his nose in the air, jaw shifting with obvious discomfort, I have to turn my gaze from his. “I won’t tell anyone. But ... I know she’s been excused each week.”

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