Page 13 of You Weren’t Meant to Be Human

Nine

Out in the living room, muffled by the flimsy door and the drone of the standing fan, Levi’s voice: “You still in there or what?”

According to the alarm clock, it’s late afternoon. Hard to prove with the blackout curtains. Crane wakes up tacky-mouthed, blankets tangled around his feet, and a gray pillow shunted off to the dirty hardwood.

For a moment—a moment too long—he can’t remember how much of the previous forty-eight hours actually happened.

There’s no physical evidence to show for it.

No new bruises, somehow. No swollen stomach.

Only a dehydration headache to prove he cried himself sick, and the thin sheen of sweat that means it’s time to update the utility failure spreadsheet.

In the living room, again: “ Talk , motherfucker.”

The only response is a boar-like grunt.

Right. The sun-warmed gravel of the parking lot. The man with the worms under his skin. The positive test. All real.

Crane doesn’t get up. He puts a hand on his stomach and watches the ceiling.

It’s dizzyingly blank up there; no overhead light, no fan, no fire alarm.

(The alarm went off two nights in a row when they moved in, so Levi ripped it down and threw it into the trash.) Nothing to focus on except the skin under his palm.

No matter how hard he presses, he can’t find the thing inside him. It’s the same fat and organs as always.

It’s not right that he can’t feel it. His body shouldn’t be allowed to hide itself from him. What did that one website say? You’re starting your third month, Mama! At nine weeks, because maybe it’s been nine weeks probably, the baby is the size of a grape.

No. Not a baby.

Embryo, then. Fetus. Larva. He imagines a larger-than-life maggot or, what is the larval stage of a worm?

Just a slightly different worm? That, sitting in the gory slop of his pelvis.

Flystrike cranked up to eleven, the sort of thing Harry was going on about before Levi put him down with the shotgun.

“You kill him or just hollow him out?” Levi says out there. He’s got that grit-teeth growl he gets when he’s mad. “What’d you do to him, huh? How bad did you fuck him up?”

Crane resists the urge to drag his phone from the nightstand and look up pictures of myiasis, human shoulders and dog necks turned into meaty lotus pods.

If he does, he’ll have to check his messages.

All the stressed texts from Aspen and Birdie he knows he’ll have, they’re going to make him ill. Again.

“Jesus.”

The telling thump-thump of the noisy floor; someone approaching. Crane buries his face in the pillow before the bedroom door opens and obnoxious yellow light cuts across the bed, pretends he’s still asleep.

Not that it matters. Levi takes Crane’s head in one big hand and thumbs open an eyelid.

“Making sure you’re still breathing,” he mumbles as Crane flinches away. He pulls a shirt out of the worn-but-not-noticeably-dirty pile beside the hamper to sniff. A purple-green bruise swallows his entire cheek, punctuated by a fresh scab. “M’going out for slugs. Don’t do nothing stupid.”

How many bullets did he use down in McDowell that he needs more already? That, or he’s stockpiling. He does that when he’s nervous.

“Big guy’s out there, he’ll keep an eye on you. We clear?”

Levi pulls on the shirt, dog tags jingling.

He’s got a whole mess of scars—some on his hands from soldier shit, couple on the arms from people fighting for their lives, the usual—but the newest is a swollen keloid that looks too much like an incision for a bowel surgery.

He came home with it a few months ago, an odd cut right above the waistband of his jeans. Never said a word about it.

“We clear?” Levi repeats.

Crane nods into the pillow.

Levi pats the wall twice. “Good,” he says, and walks out.

As soon as the apartment door thuds shut, though, Crane is up. Dragging himself out of bed, reeling against morning sickness even though it isn’t morning, unfair . He hits the bedroom door too hard and stumbles into the hall.

He yanks open the linen closet.

His testosterone. Levi said he’d gotten rid of anything he could make a mess with. Anything he could hurt himself with.

Did his needles—

Levi’s never had an issue with him being on hormones, but Aspen said it’d be a good idea “just in case” so yes, he keeps his injection kit hidden.

Split up, too. Three weeks’ worth of supplies in a glass Tupperware behind two plastic organizers in the linen closet, with extra syringes under a set of towels, a box of sharps at the bottom of his go bag, the vials themselves in his sock drawer.

Crane shoves aside the mess of cleaning supplies and extra toilet paper and reaches down into the spiderweb-choked nook behind the organizer drawers.

There. There it is. He pulls it out, peels off the lid, and counts every piece, heartbeat slowing from its tachycardia pace: 18-gauge needle; 25-gauge needle; syringe; sterile alcohol swabs; Band-Aids. All still here.

Just to make sure, he pops open the tiny cardboard box holding the vial and holds the medication up to the light.

Testosterone is an unassuming clear liquid in a nondescript medical bottle. If there’s a tint to it, that depends on the bulbs in the light fixtures. There’s only a bit left.

It’s here. It’s okay. And, even after everything, it’s shot day.

He’s not missing a dose—no way in hell.

Except the man with the worms in his head makes that boar-grunt noise.

Crane crams the vial back into the box. The man is standing at the end of the hall, where it spits out into the living room. No hood or neck gaiter anymore. Only his smashed-flat face and veiny arms and ripstop pants, like he just walked off a shift at the garage.

Seeing him in the light is strange. He wasn’t meant to be looked at in full visibility; it betrays the frayed edges where he’s unraveled or wasn’t put together right in the first place.

Gaps on the tips of his fingers where nails should be but aren’t, atrophic scars peppering dents in the skin.

Hell, with the egregious lack of living movement that isn’t the awful puppet-jerk of, what, a worm manually tugging a tendon, any civilian would have alarm bells ringing at fifty paces.

Keep an eye on you , Levi said.

What is this son of a bitch, then. Besides a stranger who shouldn’t exist. Who speaks like a swarm and holds worms between the layers of his body like a hive.

Is he a hive? A bizarre middle ground between the worms and their prey?

Hives understand their people.

The man reaches for the Tupperware with his bare calloused hands, the veins in the wrist searching for a more comfortable position, so fuck it. Crane does the stupid thing and holds it out to him.

Look , the motion says. The man tilts his head curiously, as if the supplies inside make more sense at an angle.

Look, it’s medication. Most everyone takes medication at some point.

(Crane has no idea what effects testosterone will have on a larva, on that embryonic grub inside him.

He also has no idea if the thing in front of him knows either.) It’s nothing to worry about.

If it’s anything, it’s proof that he isn’t built for this anymore.

Build a body of evidence. It’ll be best for everyone if the hive takes it all back, lets him flush the baby out, puts everything back how it was. No hard feelings.

Here, he’ll even show him.

Crane gestures for the man to follow, then eases past—come on, let’s fetch an ice pack from the freezer, and a paper towel for a placemat. Sit on the floor. If he wants to see the boy he’s here to surveil, wants to get to know him, this is the best way to do it.

The kitchen tile is cool and welcoming, and the man watches.

The man needs a name. He doesn’t have dog tags like Levi, and Crane doesn’t recognize him, doesn’t keep tabs on people in the surrounding hives, if that’s what he even was before he was this.

And labeling him David or Steve or whatever would be borderline comical.

Hey, have you seen that giant freak with literal fucking worms inside him? Oh yeah, John’s right over there.

Crane lands on Stagger , then. The way he walks, the rigor mortis marionette of it all. The kind of thing a zombie movie would call its zombies when they’re contractually obligated to avoid the z-word. Stagger. It suits him.

So Crane sets out one of each item—except the disinfecting alcohol swabs, two of those—and lets Stagger inspect them up close.

Injecting looks scary, but it’s not that bad.

He takes extra care cleaning the top of the vial, locks the 18-gauge needle onto the syringe, and draws out less than his official dose.

Stagger eyes it and Crane spreads his fingers to give him a better view.

He doesn’t have a lot of testosterone left.

Aspen’s been helping with the procuring side of things, but still; a rash of manufacturer recalls, the hive-provided ID nearly getting caught at a pharmacy, his first endocrinologist dropping every trans client with a simpering email about a new law.

Plus, getting a refill is a nightmare if you don’t talk.

Aspen has to make the phone calls, and every pharmacist is on the verge of ringing up the prescriber in a fit of disgust— Is this mute mentally competent?

Who allowed an overgrown child to destroy her body this way?

Crane has a few months’ in reserve, but after that. It’ll be tough.

Crane swaps the imposing 18-gauge needle for a smaller one and lifts it to the kitchen light to check for bubbles and impurities. None. Good.

Stagger receives the ice pack.

Stagger’s mouth pulls into a sort of frown. Crane hikes up his shirt, shuffles down the waistband of his pants, shows the soft patch beside his navel. Here—put it here.

When Stagger continues to hesitate, Crane takes his wrist and brings him closer until they’re as close as they were in the Camry. The cold makes contact. Stagger’s face is inches away. There we go. Like that.

It’s unbearably intimate, being this close.

Helping with a medical procedure so integral to Crane’s continued existence.

Intimate enough that he almost bails, is so glad he stopped speaking because he couldn’t bear being expected to put together words in a moment like this.

God, when he was nineteen and na?ve, in the first months of hormones, he would do his shot and pretend that it was Levi giving it to him.

That Levi would take even a baseline interest in the changing of his body, hell, would want to be an active participant in that changing.

And the pain, too. Levi wouldn’t let him use the ice pack.

That would be chickening out. No, he’d make Crane feel the needle as it went in, every millimeter of it.

He’d tilt Crane’s chin up so he could see the wince, grin lopsidedly as it slid through the skin and layers of fat.

It’d be so hot. It’d really be something.

But every time Crane does his injection, Levi’s never so much as in the same room. And now it’s Stagger here instead.

As soon as the ice pack begins to hurt, Crane eases it away, offering the closest thing he can manage to a smile, a thank-you. Then he disinfects the burning-cold skin, takes a pinch of stomach fat, and pushes the needle in himself.

The forty-five-degree angle is flawless. Stagger lets out a concerned whine but look, look, it’s okay. The bevel slips right through the meat, burying all the way to the hilt. Just like that. He pushes the plunger, slow and careful, and testosterone cypionate floods under the skin.

A few seconds later, it’s done. Crane pulls out the needle and plasters over the injection site with a Band-Aid.

Crane needs this. Without this, what is he?

Sophie pressing her small breasts flat with her hands, then propping them up in the mirror.

Wearing her hair long to hide behind it, and flinching from the boys in her class even though they were nothing but cordial to her; wondering, if she walked into the wrong locker room after gym class, would they push her against the bench and fuck her?

She was fourteen when she first fantasized about it.

It made her sick, even though it was so incredibly tame in comparison to what she would think up later.

(Crane should tell Levi about it. Levi would get a kick out of it, and Crane would finally have an excuse not to feel bad about getting off to being called a girl.)

Without this, what would he be except Sophie playing with matches in the back seat of her mom’s car?

And without the hive, he’s nothing.

Stagger brushes his thumb against the Band-Aid.

The knot of liquid sits under the skin, waiting to be absorbed into the body, where it will hasten the growth of dark body hair, and the restructuring of fat, and the swelling of the clit.

Can Stagger feel it? Does he want to? Can he feel this ?

Crane grabs Stagger’s wrist hard and pushes until the hand is digging into where his uterus might be, into wherever that grub is curled up asleep.

Crane would make a shit father. He can barely handle showering on a regular basis, let alone take care of a creature dependent on him for survival. He couldn’t graduate high school without trying to set himself on fire. He’s not the right person for this, and the hive has to know that.

So why him?

Can Stagger answer that? After three years of service and love and kindness, why would they subject him to this ?

Stagger doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t even give a boar-grunt, or a single clicking, rasping hive-word. He can’t be bothered to respond at all.

Crane slaps Stagger’s hand away. Gets up. Snatches all the medical trash and dumps it into the garbage except for the sharps, which will go into an old milk jug into the trunk of his car until it’s time to dump them at a needle exchange.

This half-dead, half-worm man whose only job is to watch him, keep him on a leash, control him, does not bother to answer. This thing , the arbiter of what he can and cannot do, can’t say a single word about why, and unlike Levi doesn’t even have the decency to offer to fuck him instead.

He needs to talk to the hive. Now.