Page 40 of You Weren’t Meant to Be Human

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 enunciating vuh-gine-uh in three hard pieces to drive her 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 to sorry. 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.

“Hey,” she says as she passes by. The heap of fabric is dumped in front of the door to the hive. A fly buzzes too close to Crane’s ear and he shakes his head to shoo it away. “Don’t worry about messing these up. They were all gonna go in the trash anyway.” She sniffs. “Smells like attic, though.”

As she shuffles around the blankets, trying to get them somewhat comfortable-looking, another twinge grabs ahold of Crane’s belly. He thumps against the threshold. Closes his eyes like Tammy taught him. Deep breath in. Hiss it out between the teeth.

Breathe, the hive croons.

The contractions aren’t so bad. They’re not a broken arm. Or a hammer to the head. He can handle it.

But Jess is still helping him straighten up, his face in her hands, her brows furrowed. “Your lungs working?” she asks. “There we go. I—hey, Tammy. I got him.”

The pain, Crane thinks, is getting repetitive. The impotent frustration reminds him of being a child and being told to use his words when he couldn’t. He can be mad all he wants, but it won’t make it stop.

“Levi’s out front,” Jess tells him. “He’s turning off all the lights, and locking the doors, and putting down the blinds so nobody can see in.

” She uses the sleeve of her shirt to wipe down his face; the parts of his face that still have operating sweat glands, having survived the boiling water in patches here and there.

Mainly across his soggy throat. “He hasn’t been alone with me if you’re worried.

I won’t let him be alone with you, either. ”

Her voice is so soft, so close to his temple. There’s so much buzzing. The hive sounds like wet meat, the same thing he heard while rooting around in Stagger’s insides, the constant squelching like slogging through the floor of a slaughterhouse.

She says, “Are you scared?”

It’s such a simple question, but he can’t believe he’s never been asked it before.

He can’t imagine anyone who goes through this being anything other than scared.

It’s not the pain he’s afraid of, though.

He can handle pain. He’s good at pain. He likes it sometimes.

And if childbirth kills him, if the placenta doesn’t come out right, if the uterus doesn’t close off its blood flow or an infection takes him out in a few days, then the baby’s done the hard work for him.

Maybe the uterus will full-on rupture. Straight-up tear and spill little infant feet into the abdominal cavity and kill him. Wouldn’t that be convenient.

He is, however, afraid of dying a woman.

He is afraid that he won’t be allowed to die at all.

The pain lets go. His eyes flutter open. Jess is so close to him, smiling gently.

“There we are,” Jess says when Crane looks at her. “Hi.”

She’s so kind to him. She doesn’t deserve to be here.

He should have turned her away from the gas station, he never should’ve let her step inside.

The night Sean died, he should’ve kept driving her away until they hit Virginia, and then the East Coast, and let her free on the shore of the Chesapeake Bay. He’s so sorry he didn’t.

“Tammy’s here,” she says, “and your friend’s here, and I’m here. We’ll take care of you.”

Even half-naked, it’s too warm in here. He wants a cigarette and some snowy air to calm his nerves. He can’t figure out how to say that, so he shakily mimes a smoke with two fingers to his lips. Jess raises her eyebrows.

“It’s freezing,” she protests.

“What does he want?” Tammy calls from another room.

“A smoke break?”

Tammy pokes her head into the manager’s office. “Girl, you better give him whatever he damn well wants right now. Just make sure he puts on some warm clothes. And good shoes.”

Crane doesn’t want warmer clothes. He’s burning up. He steals Levi’s coat anyway.

“Marlboros?” Jess asks. “The red ones?”

The shock of cold is a blessing. It freezes the sweat across Crane’s throat, chills the burning of his thighs and cheeks.

The blue sky has gone gray and big fat flakes float down between tree branches.

There’s no one at the pumps; they’ve been turned off, OUT OF ORDER signs plastered across the screens.

Levi must have done that too. Corridor H is silent.

Jess, who is actually halfway dressed for the cold, pulls her hat tighter around her ears as she makes sure the back door is shut tight. Stagger, most definitely not dressed for said cold but not seeming to care, doesn’t do much of anything.

Crane leans back, lets Stagger hold him steady. Jess watches the road.

It feels strange, now that it’s actually happening. He didn’t think he was going to get this far.

West Virginia is beautiful in the winter.

Just like the weatherman predicted, the flurries turned into massive snowdrifts in a blink.

The mountains are smothered and the air itself feels muted.

In a storm like this, Wash County is so isolated and lonely that Crane and Jess and Stagger might as well be the only people in the world.

And Washville itself doesn’t have a whole lot of time left.

Won’t be much longer until this place is empty for good and the woods take back everything.

The livestock exchange, Tammy’s neighborhood, the streets of the town Crane hasn’t been to in months—all gone.

Returned to the ivy and the deer and the wolves.

Crane pulls a cigarette from the fresh pack, puts it into his mouth, stares at the flame of the lighter too long before lighting it.

No need for fire now. He got what he wanted.

Stagger drops his head against Crane’s shoulder. Crane breathes in, tries to savor the precious time in between the pain, is too nervous to manage it even with the nicotine.