Page 17 of You Weren't Meant to Be Human
Crane puts the key in the ignition, because he is doing as he’s told, but does not get the chance to turn it.
The man snatches. Not for Crane, but for the seat-back lever. It falls and Crane falls with it, yelping. And then the man is grabbing him, scrabbling for Crane’s legs with his strange, fucked-up puppet-movements, and pulling him and wrenching him until Crane’s legs are sprawled over the center console and, oh fuck, no no no, the man is ontop of him.
What if the man came to kill him instead.
The survival instinct kicks in.
Crane flails. Fights for distance. If he can get somespace, he can pull the door handle and fall out backward into the parking lot and bolt. Or grab the metal pipe he keeps between the seat and the door. Crane can’t get it. Too far back. The man’s too heavy and keeps pinning him, putting weight on him. Holding him down.
Levi taught him, though. Hit dirty and hit hard, hit the throat and eyes and nose and make it hurt.
Crane catches the neck gaiter. Twist and it’ll cut off the air supply, make it feel like the eyes are going to pop out of the skull, because that’s what it feels like when someone’s choking you,reallychoking you, and not the fun way. TheI’m going to dieway.
But the gaiter comes down off the face and something’s wrong.
Crane figures it out in pieces. Has half a second to sort it out while the fabric is tight in his hands. It’s not that the face itself is wrong; he doesn’t like that phrasing here, doesn’t like the impreciseness of it in this moment. The face is flat and distinctly strange, sure, the features slightly off from where they should be. Like this man was disassembled and put back together in a hurry.
It’s what’sunder. Between the muscles and under the skin.
An artery on the neck slithers away from the makeshift garrote.
Crane jerks back. Hits the hard plastic of the car door, and his vision swims. His hips are wrenched at a bad angle. His legs are spread like he’s inviting something.
“Stop.”
There are worms. There are worms under his skin, and he speaks like the hive. And there are hands gathering up Crane’s throbbing head, cradling his skull, holding him tightly but so carefully. So kindly. The gloves are bite-proof, Crane thinks. They have the fresh smell of a hardware store.
“STOP.”
Crane stops.
The car is quiet again.
He doesn’t know what’s happening and he doesn’t know what he’s looking at anymore. Just do it. Whatever’s going to happen, Jesus Christ, get it over with,please.
Slowly, the man with the swarm in his mouth and the worms under his skin releases Crane’s head. Inch by inch, waiting for Crane to lunge, or bite. Crane doesn’t. He was told to stop, and he stopped.
So the man takes the hem of Crane’s shirt and pushes it up. Exposes the belly, the sweat to the sweltering air trapped in the car; soft fat, dark hair, the traitorous organ underneath. It rises and falls as Crane breathes. Stutters as his lungs do.
The man, with all the gravity of a religious rite, presses his face to the skin.
Prostrates himself to the altar of Crane’s insides.
The hive knows.
Eight
Early morning on the mountain, before the sun starts getting ideas. Wash County is all dark cliffs and zigzag roads and stars, insomniacs, and third-shifters at the lumberyard.
Crane started the drive chewing on a hangnail, and as he turns off Corridor H and into the gas station parking lot—when his swarm sayshomeit means here—he’s worrying a bloody mess on his thumb. The man with the worms under his skin hasn’t moved from the shotgun seat since they crossed state lines. Crane can’t stop thinking about the burning-warm face pressed to his belly, gloves holding his hips the way Levi does when they’re fucking.
TheCLOSEDsign in the window is running out of battery. Only the emergency lights are on: one over the register, another by the dumpster.
And Levi’s there. Leaning against the truck with a Marlboro between two fingers, 12-gauge propped up against the back tire. Watching the Camry with the half-lidded predatory gaze he usually reserves for worm food.
The emergency lights catch the smoke trailing from his mouth, gives him a strange halo.
Crane parks halfway up the lot and kills the engine.
