Page 23 of You Weren't Meant to Be Human
“Christ, man,” says Larry-from-another-hive.
“Levi,” says Tammy, “stop your ass right there. The hell is going on? Who is that?” She catches Stagger with a hand to the chest. “Lord almighty, you’re ugly.”
Crane jams the key into the hive’s padlock, dumps the chains to the concrete floor, and closes himself inside the stinking, constricting coffin.
In the dark, before he finds the light switch, he can almost convince himself he’s back in the trunk.
The heat. The rancid all-consuming stink. The hum of translucent wings almost like the rush of blood in his ears. And Sean’s corpse is in this room somewhere, subsumed into the wretched mess of calcium and regurgitation, covered in fly eggs and worm spit.
Crane lets the rotten air flood his mouth and decides not to turn on the light. The hive doesn’t like the light. It’s a shit equivalent for the sun, they tell him. They accept no imposters. They want the sun, the sun, the sun, and they can never have it, not in the dark rooms they hide in to survive.
Child.
He kneels. Eyes focused on nothing in the dark. It’s what he did when he saw the hive for the first time, seventeen years old and scared. Rocking side to side to soothe himself.
Oh child. Poor little thing.
He’d been so grateful back then. He tries to remember that feeling, tamp down the feral rage swallowing every ounce of patience and kindness he’s managed to dredge up. Place that gratitude back into his bones where it belongs.
Remember: without the hive, he’s nothing.
You are breathing hard. You are afraid. Why are you afraid?
He places a hand on his stomach.
He would have given the hive—any hive, not just his own, the one in McDowell or any other in the poorest mountains and countrysides—anythingelse if it had asked. What does it need? A tongue? An eye? Some other pound of flesh from his living, breathing body? Done, agreed, in a heartbeat. Without hesitation. Anything but this.
And they have to have known. That’s what he gets stuck on every time he tries to pick it apart. Hives understand their people. His hivehas always been tender. Even when he messes up, even if he does something as bad as running away. His hiveknows him.
So why?
Ah.
The little one you carry.
Don’t call it that. Don’t don’t don’t.
Does it cause you pain? Does it feel as if something is wrong?
Crane knows those words. Even understands what they mean in that order, technically.
Your body knows so much about itself. If something is wrong with the little one, if you can feel it in your womb, then please. We wish to help.
With all the strength he can muster, he shakes his head. No, nothing is—nothing is wrong with it, he doesn’t think. It’d be easier if somethingwaswrong with it, actually. He hopes there is a chromosomal abnormality so incompatible with life that the larva feeding off his oxygen supply shrivels and fails and comes out in a bloody lump.
He wants it gone. He wants it out.
Please.
The swarm buzzes. The worms slide over each other in a constant wet undertone, like saliva swishing in the mouth, or—or when intestines squirm about on the operating table. His eyes are adjusting to the dark and some of the worms are watching. Older ones, with dull bodies and heavy jaws.
We see. You are unhappy.
He is.
We imagined this might be your reaction. Gravidity must go against your instincts—a female trying so hard to appear male, to be treated as one, yes, of course.
He nods. Exactly. Of course they understand. He knew they would. His bottom lip quivers.
