Page 69 of You Weren't Meant to Be Human
The contraction’s grip on his stomach loosens and Crane gasps for air. He remembers being in middle school again, lying in bed. Pretending to be an animal in a stall, birthing a calf into the hay.
“Fuck,” Levi says. “Alright. Be there soon.”
Levi hangs up, jams the containers of food into the fridge, and grabs a duffel bag from inside the makeshift nursery. Crane tries to place it but can’t. Levi answers the question without being asked, as he starts plugging the combination into the gun safe: “Apparently, you pack bags for this kind of shit. Underwear and phone chargers, stuff like that. Come on, gas station, let’s go. Tammy said the worms want you there.”
Crane realizes they never bought a car seat.
What a thought. After everything, they forgot a car seat. He doesn’t want this baby, he’s going to kill himself, all this is at the behest of a pile of mutant invertebrates and talking flies, and they forgot the fucking car seat.
Twenty-Nine
It’s been almost two years since Crane’s had to use a menstrual pad, so maybe it’s because he’s a little out of practice, but when Tammy hands him a folded-up pack of cotton to stick into his new pair of boxer-briefs, it doesn’t feel right. As in, the pad doesn’t feel correct. He’s already embarrassed—nearly to the point of anger—that Tammy won’t leave him alone in the cramped gas station bathroom, sitting on the toilet just in case, but she’s already clucked her tongue at him.
“You’re about to have a baby come out of your vagina,” she said, purposefully enunciatingvuh-gine-uhin three hard pieces to driveher point home. “You’re gonna have to get over this modesty thing real quick.”
At least it’s not Levi in here with him. Levi’s out there closing the store.
Crane turns the pad over, inspects it, and gives Tammy a wrinkled nose.Why is it like this.
“It’s one of them overnight ones,” she says. That would be why he doesn’t recognize it; Crane hated overnight pads, back when he still had periods. He usually plastered two together before bed and hoped for the best. “You’re gonna keep leaking, so might as well catch it.”
Crane groans and unwraps the pad to the nostalgic crinkling of plastic, but Tammy has to help untangle his boxers from his ankles and smooth the pad into the fabric. Boxers are most definitely not made for pads, because why would a clothing company for men ever make them that way. Tammy tests the adhesive, frowning at the strange fit. Wait until she learns about how there aren’t sanitary bins in men’s restroom stalls.
There’s a fly on the mirror. As Tammy helps him get his underwear back over his ankles, Crane watches it. It doesn’t say anything. He can’t tell if it’s a hive fly or just a side effect of the general disrepair of the place.
Something starts to bang. Crane winces. He feels like a live wire. Everything is too bright, too loud, veering into pain if he doesn’t squint or cover his ears. Tammy had instructed Jess to find a way to turn off all but one singular bulb in the manager’s office, and if she couldn’t figure it out, to either remove the bulbs or break them. Is that Levi out there, then? Hammering? Crane stares at the door numbly, praying for the sound to stop. Eventually, it does.
“So, the contractions are bad, huh?” Tammy says, still on the grimy floor. “How bad?”
Crane has no previous experience to compare this to. He shrugs.
“They been happening all day?”
That he can answer—he nods.
Tammy sighs, but before she finishes helping him into his clothes, she walks him through checking his progress. Cervical dilation, she calls it. The same steps she took with Hannah. She pushes her fingers into him and prods, face impassive.
“Lord above,” she mutters. “All day is right.”
Crane gives a half smile in apology, the closest thing he can get tosorry.He can feel how far apart her fingers are inside him and he doesn’t like what that implies.
But hey. Almost done, right?
They help each other up. Tammy washes her hands and Crane huddles into his new clothes. Loose pants, a sports bra, not much else.
“You ready?” Tammy says.
No.
Outside the bathroom, the gas station is dark and cool. It smells distinctly of rotten meat, and the coppery stink of afterbirth he remembers from Hannah. The door to the hive’s closet has been propped open. The worms writhe and the swarm shivers. Stagger stands halfway in the room with them, and the low droning hum of wings must be what people imagine when they talk about wind turbine syndrome.
The little one, the little one is almost here.
Crane desperately wants Stagger to come to him and comfort him, but he refuses to move closer to the hive, so he looks elsewhere.Tammy has picked up her notepad to jot down whatever his cervix is doing. His vague recollections of the contractions he’d tried and failed to time in the truck are listed there too.
Our little one.
The back door creaks open and Jess fumbles her way through, lugging in pillows and blankets from Tammy’s car. Snow blows in around her feet with a whistle. Jess stamps off the slush on a towel before walking in and offering a lopsided smile.
