Page 6 of You Weren’t Meant to Be Human

Four

Jess, apparently, processes her feelings out loud.

Crane already has a stomachache and has spent the past few minutes developing a gross knot of nausea in the crux of his throat.

Now, on top of checking his rearview for stray cops wandering in from the next county over and staring daggers at the speedometer—commit only one crime at a time, never crack forty-five while there’s a body in the trunk—he has a headache too.

He puts the collar of his shirt into his mouth to pick at a thread that’s come loose from the stitching. Sure, murder would make anyone nervous. He can’t fault Jess for handling it in a way that happens to be annoying.

But he cannot deal with this right now.

“And this is normal for you?” Jess asks, addressing Crane for the first time since she started talking. “You’re used to this?”

Well, yes. Mike and Levi made sure of that. Getting locked in the trunk of a car with a corpse in the middling heat of a West Virginia summer, with all the choking death-stink, Levi with a timer and Mike sitting on the trunk to keep it closed—that would do the trick.

What had Mike said when he pulled Crane out of that trunk by the hair? “The hive’s got no use for scared little girls.”

In the grand scheme of things, Crane is being downright kind.

Jess scrubs a hand over her face, tugs at her cheeks, squeezes her nose like she’s trying to get feeling back in her body. “Okay,” she says. “Okay. It’s just that—you didn’t hesitate. Sean’s dead. You just did it. Oh my god. Okay.”

Crane doesn’t look at her, just huffs, hopes the message that comes across is, Of course I did.

Jess says, “And what happens if I can’t do it? If I decide nope, I’m out, I take it back?”

Crane hits the brakes.

The Camry screeches to a halt at a red light, the only stoplight in Wash County, where it’s just them in front of the Dollar General. The lumberyard looms in the distance.

A single sentence in the Notes of Crane’s phone: We kill you.

He shows it to her. He looks at her like, Do you see this? Do you understand what you’ve agreed to? Was the swarm unclear, was the bite on your wrist not enough to drive the point home?

Would you rather be in that house, with that man, with whatever he did to you?

Would you rather be out there in the world alone?

No. Of course not.

The light turns green.

“I wasn’t going to,” Jess says weakly. “I just wanted to ask.”

He shouldn’t be such a bitch. Think about what the man on the bedroom floor—Sean, apparently, as if he deserves a name—must have done to her to put her in the path of a hive.

To make her face down the swarm of white-striped, red-eyed flesh flies crawling in through the gaps of her makeshift prison cell, swallowing the walls and popcorn ceiling with that mind-killing hum:

Oh child, your hands—your bruises—oh child, what has he done to you? When is the last time you saw the sun?

Think about what must have been done to her, to make her look at that and say yes.

In the face of that, what gives Crane the right?

Because nobody even did anything to him. He had never been hurt, never abused, never molested, never beat. He’d been pretty, and smart, and so very good at smiling through the urge to self-immolate. Hell, his parents had even loved him.

It’s just that, at some point in his mother’s womb, through no fault of hers or his father’s or his own, he’d been put together incorrectly.

Oh child, this world was not made for ones like you. Come with us, come with us, come with us.

He shouldn’t be such a bitch, but he looks over at the girl in the shotgun seat with her dark hair and skinny lips and bags under her eyes all just like his own, and no, can’t manage it. Sorry.

If that’s all he can do, Aspen and Birdie would say, that’s alright for now. Just try to be a better person tomorrow.

Crane kills the car’s engine by the delivery entrance at the back of the gas station, pops the trunk, and storms over to Jess’s side of the car to bang his hand against her window.

Get out. She flinches but does as she’s told, standing away from him in the gravel lot the way she would if a wild animal wandered too close.

She can dislike him all she wants. He’s doing her a favor.

In the trunk, the body bag has curled up on itself where it’s been disrespectfully jammed between jugs of motor oil and antifreeze.

The head was a bit of a mess, but the guy is still in one piece, so Crane counts this as an easy hunt.

Still, the sick bolus in his throat won’t dislodge.

Nausea’s been chasing him for days now. Weeks, actually.

It’s just that he’s been bullying through it like he’s done all his life.

Be a big boy and get over it. He nods Jess to him, has her grab the handles by the feet. Let’s get this son of a bitch up.

Inside, Tammy is waiting for them, attempting to appear frustrated and not doing a very good job.

As soon as the door closes and the two of them drop the body onto the floor beside the crates of beer waiting to go into the drink cooler, she’s rushing over.

Or the closest she can get to rushing with her knees so bad.

She grabs Jess by the cheeks—Jess is taller than her by a good half foot, though that’s not difficult—and checks her over. Her jaw, her mouth, her temple.

“You got all your pieces?” Tammy demands. “Not hurt nowhere, are you? Look at me, let me check your eyes.”

“I’m okay,” Jess says as her eyelids are unceremoniously pulled apart.

“Uh-huh.” Next, Tammy takes Jess’s wrists, turns them to inspect the bruises and scabs. “The bastard didn’t put a hand on you?”

“I’m okay, I promise.”

Tammy needs a few more seconds to believe her, but as soon as she’s assured that the poor girl is all together and okay, she gives Jess a sharp granny-tug on the ear.

Jess yelps. “Ow!”

“What’d you go and do something like that for?” Tammy demands, gesturing at the door. Jess visibly scrambles to keep up with the one-eighty. “Did you walk to his house? All the way across the county? You’re going to give an old woman a heart attack, you hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Jess whispers. “I just—I thought—they said I could.”

Tammy’s face softens for half a second. “I know, sweetheart. You’ve had a rough week. We’ll get this done and we can go home.” Then she turns on Crane. “And you .”

For his trouble, he receives a pinch straight on the nose and a shake of his entire head. Crane gives an undignified squawk.

“At least the boys gave you a month to settle in!” she snaps. “Trying to get her to do it herself already, I cannot believe you.”

Crane rubs his nose. Did Jess text Tammy to tattle on the drive back? Holy shit, what is she, five?

“Anyway.” Tammy jingles the key. “Grab that body, let’s get the worms fed.”

The first time Crane saw his hive, it was an incomprehensible horror.

The sight was so alien, he couldn’t put the pieces together: scraps of clothing and chunks of hair, bones gnawed apart to scrape nutrients from the marrow, ossified calcium vomited into a wasp’s nest taking up the entire storage closet.

The flies slept in clumps and the worms pulsed like neurons under a microscope, or what Crane imagined that might look like.

These days, when he sees his hive, it’s a moment of peace. He doesn’t understand much, but he does understand this.

Children, the hive croons. Hello, hello, hello.

Today is different.

When Tammy opens that door, the smell hits like a brick.

It’s a meat freezer left unplugged, the trunk of Mike’s car with the sunbaked corpse.

Jess’s eyes are watering; she’s breathing through her teeth like she can filter out the rancid particles in the air.

That’s fine. She’s not used to it. But Crane’s stomach completely betrays him.

His mouth waters, saliva lurching forward to protect the teeth and soft tissues from incoming stomach acid.

No, he is not going to throw up in front of Jess. He tries to swallow the mess of spit, but that makes it worse.

You care for us, and we care for you in turn.

This needs to be over with. Before he makes a mess. He drops the bag to the floor, making Jess hiss when the rough plastic strap is ripped from her hands, and fumbles for the zipper.

You treat us so kindly, children. You offer us so much. We are so lucky to have you.

Together, with Tammy watching because she doesn’t have the strength for this anymore, they shove the corpse out of the body bag and onto the floor, spilling blood and brain matter across the tile. One arm ragdoll-flops onto the floor with a gross smack .

We thank you. We love you.

The hive descends. Chattering worms lunge from their calcium-keratin-synthetic fiber mound to burrow into the softest parts of Sean’s body they can find.

The cheek, under the jaw, crawling up the shirt into the stomach.

The youngest worms are small, maybe as thick as Crane’s thumb and a foot long, and quick as fuck.

They crawl and chew and swallow, leaving behind a series of gaping wounds for their bigger, slower elders to follow them into the meat.

Once the worms are done, then the flies will come down and pick the rotten parts clean, lay eggs to replenish the swarm. The cycle of life.

And as the worms feast, the flies talk about the space beyond the dark, stinking storage closet.

How the sky is such a lovely shade of blue, then gold, then pink, then the deepest, richest purple.

How the mountains are ancient and alive.

How they are all so hungry and this little corner of the world is so perfect in the light.

“Holy shit,” Jess breathes.

The room is the color of a cut-open stomach.

Crane can’t keep it down anymore.

He stumbles out of the room—“Crane?” Tammy says—and can’t open the delivery door properly, just slams into the push bar and lurches outside before he vomits.

It’s the kind of throwing up that feels like getting punched in the stomach, that’s so violent he can’t get a breath in between one retch and the other.

His lungs lock up. His throat collapses.

He catches himself on the hood of the Camry, doubles over, makes that sick croaking sound that comes up with puke.

Once his stomach is empty, a string of drool falls from his lips to the gravel. His mouth tastes like sand and bitter, burning acid.

He gasps for air. Fuck. Fuck.

Behind him, the delivery door clacks shut.

“Crane?” Tammy says again. “Oh Lord, what a mess.”

He spits, and she puts a hand on his chest to ease him upright.

“I was telling you,” she murmurs, “you ain’t been looking good.”

He shakes his head. He’s fine. It won’t happen again.

Tammy won’t take that for an answer. She sits him on the curb beside the ice cooler, presses the back of her hand to his forehead, tries to suss out a possible fever. There’s nothing. The neon CLOSED sign shines in the window. An ad for Camels stares across the empty lot.

“Hold tight,” she’s saying, “give me a moment.”

Crane drops his head between his knees and spits again. He’s fine. Yes, he’s been feeling off lately, but he’s always off. He spent most of his childhood vaguely nauseated. And he’s tired, and his head hurts, and his stomach’s been upset for so long. He’s fine. He’s fine.

Tammy comes back a minute later with a bottle of water: a godsend.

“Here.” He takes a mouthful and swishes before dribbling it out into the gravel.

Stomach acid warps the taste, turning it so bizarrely sweet that he flips the bottle over to see if it isn’t some newfangled sugared stuff, or maybe flat soda.

“And this too.”

Tammy taps a box against his shoulder.

It’s a pregnancy test.

Crane shoves it back at her. Stumbles to his feet, coughs like he’s trying to get something out of his lungs.

Absolutely not. He—no, it doesn’t work like that.

He’s been on testosterone for almost two years, he hasn’t had his period in nearly as long, there hasn’t even been any spotting or anything.

You can’t get pregnant on testosterone. It doesn’t work like that.

Right?

Crane realizes, slowly, that he’s not sure.

Tammy regards him like he’s a child, and it makes him hate himself a bit.

“Just take it,” she says. Crane shakes his head.

“Sweetheart, I am sixty-five goddamn years old. Believe me when I say I’ve seen my fair share of girls in denial.

Not that I’m saying you’re a girl, but I’m saying I know it when I see it. ”

She holds the box against his chest until he gives in.

All Crane can think is that pregnancy tests, for a minuscule while, had been gender neutral.

There’d been a whole campaign about it when Sophie was in high school.

Nobody had been asking for much—just, could companies please say pregnant people instead of pregnant women, and maybe could there not be so much pink on the box?

It’d worked, for a time. A few companies made the switch, taking the opportunity to turn a minuscule packaging decision into a sweeping promotional campaign celebrating their progressiveness, their inclusivity, their whatever.

One commercial even showed a man looking down at his (flat) belly while a handsome husband rubbed his shoulders.

How wonderful. After decades of fighting tooth and nail, a trans guy got to see himself on TV for three seconds.

But it backslid quick. None of it had made the companies more money, because of course it hadn’t, and some far-right fuckface posted a video on social media with a gun, talking about finding the marketing execs responsible and executing them in Times Square.

So this box in his hand is bright pink and says women so many times that it feels like groveling.

See? We’re reasonable people who know what a woman is.

He can’t be pregnant. He can’t.