Page 38 of You Weren’t Meant to Be Human

Stagger is heavier than Levi, fatter around the belly.

Less hairy, though. All the hair is concentrated below the navel, his flaccid cock resting limply against his thigh, and in the dim light it’s just possible to make out the things that don’t line up.

The pubic hair pattern bisected and rejoined half an inch from where it should be, a puckering scar from the groin to the belly.

He is made of skin sitting wrong on the muscle, muscle packed wrong on the bone, worms visible in the forearms and hips and thighs.

What had Irene said? All that cuttin’ up and sewin’ together.

Then Stagger is getting into the tub. Crane snorts, tries to gesture something along the lines of hey, a little cramped in here , but that doesn’t stop him.

Crane has to settle between Stagger’s knees, belly resting on his thighs while Stagger lies back.

It’s weird to be up here, looking down at him. Usually Crane is under someone else.

Stagger pulls the skin of his lower stomach taut.

Crane’s attention snaps to the tip of the knife.

Just as it sinks into the soft skin just above the groin.

Crane doesn’t flinch. He’s been with the hive too long for that.

He watches with a sick fascination, the same way he watched those animal birth videos on Levi’s phone.

Stagger cuts through his skin a small slice at a time, working hide off a deer, an inch and then two.

He doesn’t make any noise of pain, either, give any indication that it hurts; only breathes out hard through his nose, shudders with the collective movement of subcutaneous creatures shuffling to avoid the sharp point.

Stagger bleeds. Crane doesn’t know why he’s surprised by this.

Three inches. When Stagger breathes, it forces the edges of the wound apart, shows the layers of skin and muscle and the black pit leading to his insides.

Blood streams down Stagger’s sides, the crook of his thighs.

It catches in the gnarled hair above his dick.

Crane tries to tell himself that the wound doesn’t remind him of a pussy but come on, look at it.

He wants to touch it. He wants to soak in the heat to ward off the cold, stick his hands in the cut and feel it.

Four inches now. Stagger sets the knife aside and takes Crane’s hands to warm them between his own. Together, they move toward the wound, and the blood is burning hot.

“Okay,” Stagger says, panting.

Two fingers skim the cut. The same way Crane would touch his cunt before finally giving in. The skin bends under the pressure. Stagger holds his wrist tight, assuring him.

Crane slips inside.

Stagger groans, head lolling back against the tile.

The split muscles spasm. Something brushes Crane’s fingers, and for a moment he thinks it might be intestines, if Stagger still has those anymore.

He remembers hearing somewhere that during abdominal surgery, doctors hang the intestines on racks and they wriggle impatiently up there, annoyed to have been removed from their den.

It’s not intestines, though. It was never going to be.

Stagger’s fingers fumble for the wound and spread it open. Inviting him. Begging.

Crane leans over him in the cramped tub, holding himself up, trying to find purchase on the slick porcelain.

He ends up straddling Stagger’s thighs instead of sitting between them.

There it goes. This is better. A third finger slips into the cut, and then another, all of them—pushing aside layers of flesh, fingers splayed, searching.

Stagger gasps, lips curling back from his teeth, uneven eyes fluttering.

Crane imagines it’s the same expression Stagger would make if Crane leaned down and put that cock in his mouth.

He thinks about the night he and Levi figured out how much lube it takes to fit a clenched fist all the way to the cervix.

His clit throbs at the memory and now’s not the time but maybe it is.

He loses control of his breathing. Stagger reaches for Crane’s thigh and squeezes.

It’s the first time Crane has felt attractive since he started to show.

God, it’d be so easy to sign please , take that cock in hand until it hardens, lift his hips just a little and guide it in.

Stagger would be too gentle, but he’s strong, Crane could convince him; he wouldn’t be hurting the baby, only him. Just bruises, no broken bones.

In the burning, wretched space of Stagger’s belly, a worm slips against Crane’s palm. He snatches it. It resists, squirming away, but he’s not messing up this time. He wraps it around his fingers and pulls.

Stagger breathes as if he’s the one giving birth, grunting pitifully. Look at you , Crane wants to tell him, wishes he had the free hands to sign. You’re perfect.

The worm emerges. Just a part of it at first, a wet, squirming middle trapped in the hand.

It’s an anatomical pink, the same color as uncooked meat.

This close, the details are finally clear.

The squishy, ridged body. Lines of nubby tendrils gripping Crane’s fingers, trying to make sense of what’s grabbed hold of it.

Then it’s all out, slipping free from the bizarre cesarean.

It’s a small worm. A foot long, a bit thicker than his thumb; it must be young.

He’s seen them get up to a yard, as wide as his wrist at the thickest parts, and he can’t discount the idea that Stagger has one of those big bastards where his large intestine had once been, or maybe nestled in between the curves of it.

But this little one dangles from Crane’s fingers, waving wildly, searching for the hole it’d come from.

The worst part of the worms is the face. Or what passes for the face. Splayed jaws surrounded by, what, feelers, antennae?

Stagger’s throat shines with sweat despite the chill. His belly is slick. All Crane can think to do is take his free hand and run it across Stagger’s arm to comfort him.

“In,” Stagger moans. Stagger’s bloody hand pats his own cheek, his temple, then slides down to the scar where he’d been cut so neatly in half and then put back together wrong. “In.”

Crane touches the scar too. Was he alive when it happened? Was he awake? Is he alive or awake now?

He remembers, months ago, Levi talking to Stagger on the other side of the bedroom door.

You still in there or what? Levi knew who Stagger had been, then.

Maybe Stagger had been an enforcer at another hive once upon a time, or maybe he had been military, too.

And then what the hive called him—a failure.

The hive vivisected him and chewed him up and destroyed him.

The hive was trying to make something. Change something. From the sound of it, it didn’t work.

Cuttin’ up and sewin’ together.

In Crane’s belly, the baby turns, reaches out with a tiny hand.

“Hurts,” Stagger says. His lip quivers.

Crane considers taking the knife and killing them both. Severing Stagger’s spinal cord to obliterate the man underneath the worms, then finding the fastest way to off himself so he won’t have to sit through the bleeding-out for long. The knife is right there. It’s right there.

The only thing that stops him is the baby.

Not because he cares about it. But because if it dies, Levi is just going to do this to someone else. It might be Jess. It might be Hannah again. And Crane isn’t going to let himself become responsible for that.

So he does not touch the knife. Instead, he leans down, curls Stagger’s hands around his own, and together they crush the creature they pulled out of his guts.

Somewhere deep inside him, it is a shock to Crane that this creature dies.

That it is capable of something as mundane as dying.

But as the worm spasms and leaks fluid between their fingers, and Stagger’s chest heaves, he thinks, of course it does.

Why else would it be so hungry? Why else would the hive be so capable of anger, which is just another word for fear?

Their mouths are so close. Crane can see the vein at Stagger’s temple shift and slither, disappearing into the brain, and one day maybe that movement will destroy the part of the gray matter that allows for what little speech Stagger can manage, but today is not that day.

Crane, with bloody hands, signs, please? Stagger nods.

The kiss is clumsy, and cold, but still a kiss.

It’ll be over soon.