Misconstrued (Mistaken)

by Pixie Unger

  “You gave food to mother,” the guy at the end of the table said softly.

  I frowned and tried to remember what he was talking about. “I don’t … I don’t know what you mean.”

  The guy on my left said, “You can’t eat food so you give to other human. Mother.”

  “Oh. Yeah. I didn’t know you knew she was expecting.”

  They all nodded slowly.

  I awkwardly picked up a chunk of cooked carrots with my fingers. “I wish you had names I could learn. It would be easier if you weren’t all—” I stopped. “nameless monsters” was not the phrase to use in this situation, neither, I suspect, was “the same.” For the life of me, quite possibly in the most literal way, I could not figure out how to finish that sentence.

  They were watching me expectantly.

  I just sagged and dropped my eyeline to the table.

  “Give us names,” the speaker at the end said.

  “What?”

  There was a general nodding from this small group.

  “Names you can say,” the guy on my left agreed.

  I looked around and realized the cafeteria was mostly cleared out. This whole thing was getting more and more uncomfortable. I licked my lips nervously. “Naming people is a big responsibility,” I countered.

  That made them a lot more attentive. It didn’t help me relax at all.

  “I wouldn’t want to rush that and make bad choices.”

  They all nodded solemnly.

  “It would be easier if I was back with my people and had some time to think about it.”

  “Not eaten food yet,” Lefty pointed out.

  “Neither have you,” I countered.

  Everyone except for Lefty snickered. He grinned at me and popped a whole chunk of prime rib into his mouth.

  I concentrated on eating my carrots and zucchini.

  The talker on the end of the table growled something at Lefty, who promptly dumped another slice of meat on my tray where the carrots had been. Okay, well, the honesty thing hadn’t gotten me killed yet.

  “Why did you do that?” I asked.

  “You do not have to accept my gifts,” the talker explained, “but you should still have some meat. You will eat food from him, so now you have some.”

  That was not comforting. “What did I just agree to by accepting food from you?” I asked.

  That caused a flurry of talking that I didn’t understand, but the general consensus seemed to be nothing.

  “Okay,” I said hesitantly. “I’m going to take you at your word that this food doesn’t come with strings attached—” Shit! Could they even understand that idiom? Looking up, the answer seemed to be no. “That you aren’t going to make me pay for this food later,” I finished lamely.

  Understanding dawned. The talker at the end got it first. Lefty was next, then the mumbler across from me, and the silent one only understood after someone translated it for him.

  When they all were watching me expectantly waiting for me to continue, I added, “I’m not leaving the beef because of you, personally. I just can’t eat it without a knife to cut it into smaller pieces.”

  That started a huge discussion that I was no part of. It stopped immediately when I touched Lefty’s arm and suddenly they were all staring at my hand. I snatched it away and mumbled a frightened, “Sorry!”

  No one said anything.

  “Please,” I begged. “Please, just let me go back to the others.”

  They all immediately stood up and led me out. Two slices of very nice beef left abandoned on the tray. I felt a little sick at the waste, but was so relieved when we reached the exit to the school yard that I bolted back for the tent city.

  The next time it was the beige food, I didn’t even bother getting in line, I stayed in my tent instead. The following meal, I was pulled out of the tray return line by one of the smaller orcs and brought through the school to an upstairs classroom to face an older guy who could have been the orc that threw out my lunch the last time I was here. He was sitting at a conference table covered in randomly shaped things that I didn’t have any hope of recognizing.

  “You refused to eat again,” he said, not even looking up from what he was doing.

  “Not at all!” I answered promptly. “I just finished eating my … whatever that was like a good girl. You don’t have to worry about me.”

  Now he looked up and glared at me. Well, shit. I knew that wasn’t going to work, but I had to at least try. I coughed, looked down, and shifted uncomfortably.

  He sighed, then said something I didn’t understand. The one who had brought me picked up a small recliner and positioned it across the table from the old guy. Once I was seated, he left and the old guy started to speak.

  “I reviewed the surveillance from the last time you were here. You repeatedly asked to leave and were not assisted in that. Do you wish for the ones that did that to be punished?”

  I gaped at him. When he spoke again, I realized his lips didn’t match the sound of his voice. Did he have some sort of translator? How did that even work? Oblivious to my thoughts, he continued, “We have learned to ask humans before disturbing their social groups. You have a propensity for self-harm otherwise.”

  There was a lot to unravel in that statement, starting with “I’m not sure if they count as social contacts, but I don’t want them punished for trying to feed me. I don’t want to be punished because they keep trying to help.”

  He nodded, or at least bobbed his head. His eyes never left mine. That was more creepy than I could even begin to express. I shivered a little and tried to get that under control. “I am told that you only refuse one meal and you are consistent about which one that is,” he continued.

  I nodded.

  “Tell me why.”

  I took a deep breath. “I don’t know why, but after I eat that one, I feel sick. I don’t want to be sick, so I’ve stopped eating it.”

  He cracked his knuckles without breaking eye contact. I looked down at my hands clenched in my lap.

  “It is unwise to put your enemy in your blind spot. How do you not know that?”

  I shrugged without looking up. “If you want me dead, there isn’t a damned thing I can do about it. What’s the point in seeing death coming?”

  The silence was ringing.

  “You think I would kill you?”

  I didn’t really know what to say to that. “I am very aware that you could,” I finally whispered. When I looked up he was still watching me, but now he was rubbing the skin at the base of his tusk.

  “We cannot provide special food for humans who refuse to eat.”

  “I know. You already told me that. If you have surveillance, then you must know I’ve never asked for special food, they decided to do that all on their own. All I ever did was avoid the food that makes me sick.”

  “You aren’t getting enough nutrition to lose the calories every eight meals.”

  “Oh.” I thought about that as I picked at my clothes. I was wearing what was basically a prison uniform, the same as every other human in the camp. We were all slowly losing weight since we arrived. It was slow enough that it was hard to notice, but it was happening. “I’m not sure what you want me to do about that.” I thought some more. “You said you were trying to avoid causing me to self-harm, but the only thing I can change in this situation is to die faster.”

  He didn’t say anything to that. Finally, I looked up. He was still staring at me. “Can I go now? Or is there anything else you wanted to tell me?”

  “I want you to tell the medic how the food is making you sick. Then you can return to the others.”

  I nodded. He went back to whatever he was doing. Someone stepped out of my blind spot, making me jump. I was led through the school to another classroom. This one had a wall knocked down to make the room bigger with orc-sized beds. One orc was pointing a light at another who was laying down.

  My guide spoke with the standing orc, who replied and pointed to one of the chairs.
I sat and waited. These chairs were nowhere near as comfortable as the ones in the previous room. Eventually, the one with the light came over and I tried to explain allergies to him. It took hours and he kept pressing strange things to the inside of my wrist.

  Finally, he nodded and I was taken back outside. It was fully dark by then. There weren’t any yard lights or street lights, and the moon wasn’t full enough to really see by. I took a couple of hesitant steps forward, but when the door closed, I was plunged into darkness. I stood very still and waited for my eyes to adjust. It took me a long time to find my tent.

  ----

  Miriam and Nicoli gave me an apologetic look, but got up and moved away when I tried to sit next to them at breakfast. I looked over at Erika in surprise.

  “What? You’ve been spending a lot of time in the school and now They are always watching you,” she pointed out.

  I didn’t have to ask which They she meant.

  “That’s not my fault,” I protested.

  “I know, Mina” she conceded. “but that doesn’t make it less creepy.”

  I looked up. I could see seventeen orcs, and two of them were watching me. She was right, that was creepy.

  Over the next two days the number of people who were willing to talk to me plummeted. Beige food came up in the rotation, and I didn’t even bother getting up from where I was sitting alone by the fence. This wasn’t how I had expected things to go. It was all going wrong, and I just wanted to leave. At some point, I might just sneak over the fence and make a break for it. It didn’t seem like they could track us by heat. If you could get behind cover and be still and quiet, they would walk right past you. Plus, this was a school, not a prison. It wasn’t as though I needed to get over a razor wire fence.

  There was a quote from before that I couldn't quite remember about the walls being in your head. That was true. People stayed because of the food and the protection from the other assholes out there. I had spent the last couple of years getting good at avoiding both problems. It had just been bad luck that I was caught without cover when they found me. I knew better now.

  Someone, who looked vaguely like the interfering orc who had started all of this, came over and stood next to me. He was standing close enough to put my head at perfect kicking height, but I fought to ignore that.

  “Come. Eat.”

  I didn’t even look at him. “Unless the menu has changed, I can’t.”

  “I share.”

  “Me going with you to eat your food just gets me in trouble. I don’t want trouble. I’ll just stay where I am, thank you.”

  He just growled. I refused to look up at that. Whatever happened was going to happen, no matter what I did. I wasn’t expecting him to sit down next to me. That made my heart rate jump.

  “Go away! You’re making it worse!”

  I wasn’t really expecting that to work, so I was surprised when it did. He immediately got up, dusted off his pants, and left. I watched him go. He stiffened slightly as the guards he was walking past laughed at him. Shit. That couldn’t be a good sign.

  The staring only got worse, and that night the other woman in my tent, Barb, packed up her things and left. I couldn’t really blame her. I wasn’t popular just now, and no one wanted to catch that by association.

  The next four days, it slowly devolved to the point where I was getting the silent treatment from basically everyone in the camp. I spent a lot of time sitting alone by the fence. I missed another beige meal, but I didn’t feel like moving to get the next one, either. I watched the sun go down, and didn’t even bother trying to find my tent. It was time to just leave the camp, go back to living in the wilds and organizing my own meals. I was a good little scavenger when I needed to be.

  One of the guards found me when he was doing his rounds. I was herded back to the school, through the hallways, and parked in the nurse’s office. The medic wasn’t there; the guard had to turn on the lights when we arrived. I sat in a chair and waited.

  It felt like I might have been there a while when I heard the head honcho’s voice demand, “What are you doing?”

  I turned to see him and the medic coming through the door. I thought about his question before I replied. “You’re right,” I admitted. “Special arrangements shouldn’t be made for humans who don’t eat. It makes the other humans uncomfortable.”

  “Of course I’m right!” he announced. “That doesn’t answer the question. What are you doing?”

  I thought some more. “I think we’ve reached the point where I’m dying faster.”

  He stomped angrily over to the other side of the table. “This is because of that thing you said about isolation as a form of torture, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, I guess. It isn’t like they’re doing it to be mean. It’s just that none of us understand why your men singled me out, and it’s making everyone afraid.”

  He gave a long look. “Even if I send you to another camp, the rations for humans aren’t any different there.”

  I nodded and waited for him to continue.

  “You are having a hard time thinking rationally because you were already deficient in some of the nutrients you need in order for your brain to process properly when we last looked into that. It will only have gotten worse since then.”

  I snorted in disbelief. “And what nutrients might those be?”

  “Ones that your limited science hadn’t discovered yet.”

  I rolled my eyes. I was fine. A little tired and hungry, but fine. But he wasn’t done yet.

  “I think it would be a good idea for us to see if the medic can do anything to help.”

  I bit my lip and didn’t point out that the last time I was there, the medic hadn’t been able to do anything for me. I just went along with it and hoped it would get me out of here sooner rather than later.

  “I’m fine!” I insisted. “I’m just a little tired.”

  The medic, who was huge and burly with hands that I couldn’t imagine holding a delicate suture set, nodded. “Alright then. How about we give you something to help you sleep tonight, and we can figure the rest out in the morning.”

  “Or I could just go back to my tent,” I suggested.

  “Tomorrow, perhaps. I want to keep an eye on you tonight.” He caught my hand and put a med patch on the inside of my wrist. The world started to wobble almost immediately. “Easy there,” he murmured. “Let’s just get you over to the beds so you can lay down.”

  He basically carried me. I wasn’t really able to walk, but he got me laying down and pulled a blanket over me. “Just rest,” he said as I lost consciousness.

  ----

  I woke naked and curled on my side. At first I thought I had a hot water bottle pressed against my tummy, but then I realized it was stuck to me. It was square, about the size of a throw pillow, vaguely leathery, and full of some sort of gel.

  “What is this?”

  “Ah! You’re awake. The Commander will want to speak with you. That is a very expensive, interstitial nutrition. Completely balanced. It will take between two and five days to be completely absorbed, depending on how malnourished you are.”

  “He said he couldn’t get me special food, but he didn’t say anything about this,” I marvelled.

  “You put me in a very awkward position,” the old guy announced from the doorway.

  I blinked and pulled the blanket tighter around myself.

  “You cannot live on the food we have for you and I had no way to arrange enough food to keep you alive. As I see it, that left me three choices. Let you continue to starve, slowly dying. Or put you out of your misery, and save the resources of feeding you for someone who has a chance to live.”

  “But—” I tried to interject.

  “Or,” he continued, “I can sell you to someone who is willing to spend his personal resources to care for a defective human.”

  “What?!” I almost yelled.

  “Don’t worry, you will be well-cared for.”

  He turned and left. I
stared at the medic in horrified confusion. “I don’t understand what he’s talking about.”

  “The medical device you are wearing. It is repairing the damage that had begun to develop in your internal organs. It will allow you to return to full function,” he explained. “When I said it was expensive, I meant it. We don’t waste that sort of product on just anyone. You are very lucky that someone was enchanted enough with you to spend a considerable amount of money to keep you alive.”

  I swallowed and stared wide eyed at him. “Who?”

  He blinked in apparent surprise. “Don’t you know? He’s been trying to keep you fed for weeks now.”

  Maybe I was nutritionally deficient, because I was having a hard time processing that. “So … he bought me? Like a pet, or—” I stopped. I knew what the other option was, but I didn’t want to think about it.

  The medic was watching me a bit too intently. “Perhaps bought isn’t the right word. He accepted financial responsibility for your care.”

  I shivered and pulled the blanket tighter around me.

  “Well, he and his friends did. The commander made them pay upfront the full expected costs of keeping you alive for the next ten years.”

  Alive could be a fairly broad criteria, I thought. Especially if you were allowed to add qualifiers like “barely”. “Did those costs include clothing?”

  The medic frowned. “Of course.”

  “Can I have some then?”

  He turned his back on me and spoke to someone else who nodded and left. “You should try to sleep some more.”

  I snorted. “I just woke up, naked and even more vulnerable than normal. I've been told that I have been sold to a bunch of you, presumably to— what? Share? That isn’t exactly relaxing.”

  The medic frowned. “You keep talking about being a prey species. You are getting a bit famous around here for saying that. You sound ridiculous when your species is responsible for more than one mass extinction.”

  I blinked. “As a species, sure. Individuals are small and squishy without sharp claws or big teeth, or warm fur. We survive as a group. Whether you (collectively) intended it or not, I have been separated from the herd and all the safety that comes with being part of that group.”