Page 14 of You Weren’t Meant to Be Human

Ten

As a condition of his suicide watch, Crane is no longer allowed to drive. Because of course. Why would Levi or Stagger or the worms agree to let him behind the wheel when he could crumple it around a tree or send it off a sharp mountain’s edge.

Crane is peeved about it on a trivial level.

Killing yourself in a car accident has too much uncertainty, too many opportunities to muck it up and survive.

Sophie dreamed about it in regard to the whole self-mutilation thing, oh my god did she weigh the pros and cons of being caught in a car fire and being pulled out in just the nick of time.

But for this? Not Crane’s method of choice.

Besides, it’s not like he’s going to do it. He won’t have to go that far. The hive will understand.

“There’s someone here,” Levi snarls when Crane nips out of the truck and slams the door. Stagger, attempting to follow through the same door, narrowly avoids getting his thick fingers caught. He protests with an annoyed click. “Hey—”

Yeah, there’s a car at the pumps, whatever. Just don’t let anyone into the back. They’ve done riskier stuff with more people around.

The sky is the dull blue of summer twilight, the first violet streaks of sunset splashed across the clouds, the kind of color the swarm would spend hours recounting to the hive, only to fail to do it justice.

The bell rings when Crane shoves his way inside.

Jess is nearly asleep at the register—her hair put up with a claw clip since she’s using the ponytail holder to tie back her shirt, some relief from heat that West Virginia infrastructure is not made for—while Tammy does inventory and a bearded trucker type counts out change for a coffee.

It’s been on the pot so long it’s burnt.

“Crane?” Tammy struggles to her arthritic feet. “Sweetheart, where have you been? Did you get my messages?”

He doesn’t answer. Levi doesn’t answer for him either, only presents his bite-marked wrist to the man at the counter. “Coffee’s on the house, Larry. Take it and get out.”

“What?” says Jess as Crane yanks the key from behind the register and makes a beeline for the manager’s office.

“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— anything else 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 hive has always been tender. Even when he messes up, even if he does something as bad as running away. His hive knows 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 something was wrong 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.

We know you. We understand you.

Yes.

We know you better than you know yourself.

That’s why he’s here. Without the hive, he’s nothing.

And is this not what you wanted?

Crane tries to breathe in but can’t. Thinks he feels his heart stop somewhere in his throat.

All the autonomic functions of the body grind to a cold stop.

You pleaded for us to do as we wished with you, didn’t you? To mold you in our image. To give you a place. To make your choices, change your body, make you into something useful. To keep you from being something other than fuckmeat and repulsive lust and fear.

To make the outside match the inside.

How fortunate, then, that we’ve given you what you want.

Crane doesn’t hear the hive door open or the footsteps. Barely feels the hands guiding him away, leathery skin cradling his face and directing it toward the office light.

“What did you do?” Tammy is demanding. Not of him. There’s spit on her wrinkled lips. Crane crams his nose into her palm to find her pulse, squeezes his eyes shut, tries to pretend he’s a teenager in her guest room again. “One of y’all better fucking answer me.”

Our child simply needs time to come around.

“To what ?”

Levi says, “He’s pregnant.”

Crane focuses on Tammy’s pulse. Tries to match his to hers, even though he feels like he’s going to have a heart attack and hers is getting faster, faster.

Jess, somewhere in the office, says, “Holy shit.”

“Okay.” Tammy sucks in air through her crooked teeth and drags her free hand through Crane’s hair. “Okay, sweetheart. I can handle this. We’ll just—”

You will NOT.

Tammy flinches.

The little one is ours.

“We’re keeping it,” Levi says.

Tammy snarls. “Fuck.” Then, “Go with them, baby.” She hands Crane off to Jess and Stagger. “Sit him down, I’ll be right there.” Then she’s raising her voice at Levi and the hive, and Stagger is leading him to the chair in the corner of the office and Jess is helping him sit.

The gas station tilts under him.

“He can handle it,” Levi is saying.

“Hey,” Jess murmurs. “Hey. Breathe.”

He realizes with sudden clarity that he hates her.

If the hive was going to pick anyone for this bullshit, why couldn’t it have been her? She comes here, fucks up her first hunt, and has the gall to stand in front of him and look at him with such big eyes, like she feels bad about this. As if she knows him, or cares.

It should’ve been her. Let her be the one to carry the hive’s precious little one . Hell, maybe she’d even like it. Maybe they should find out.

Jess takes a step back. “Crane?” she says nervously.

Stagger puts a hand on the back of his neck and squeezes.

Then Tammy is in front of him again. Oh, thank god.

Ma is here. He reaches for her childishly and she allows it, presses his hands tight between hers.

She’s cold. Her skin is paper-thin, fragile like suede, every knot and vein and spot painfully visible.

He wonders how many years she has left. Who knows how much time the hive takes from their people.

“How far along are you?” she asks. Jess looks away. “Do you know?”

He shakes his head.

She extricates a hand and presses the palm to Crane’s stomach. Tells him to lean back a bit, dear. Moves down, nudges aside the waistband of his pants to press her fingers right above the pelvis. Lower than Crane would’ve thought to go.

“ Almost feel something.” She thinks, puts pressure on a different spot. Hums. “There it is. I’d say—” A sigh. “Eleven weeks. Maybe closer to twelve.”

Not just the start of the third month. Three months, in their totality.

The medical abortion Aspen and Birdie had scheduled wouldn’t have worked.

“It gets a little easier in the second trimester,” Tammy offers.

“You stop feeling so sick all the time, if you’re lucky.

” She takes her cold fingers away, leans in.

Lowers her voice. “If you want to move back in with me, you let me know. I’ll get you out of there.

I don’t care what I have to say to that boy. ”