The Family Man

by Amy Cross

  As soon as he says those words, I feel a wave of nausea pass through my body like a shiver.

  "I know you swore not to have that kind of procedure last time," he continues, "but -"

  "Typical," I say, interrupting him. "I'm being carted into an ambulance, and you're trying to sneak a peak."

  "Katherine -"

  "You want me to look more like Jane Mansfield?" I ask with a smile. "You're a married man, Mike, with a kid on the way. You probably shouldn't be thinking about my boobs so much. Or if you have to, at least keep it to yourself."

  "You had it done," he replies. "Didn't you?"

  "Yeah," I say cautiously, keen to avoid the actual words. "Sorry, Mike. Those good old fun-bags are gone. Still, they had a pretty good ride, huh? I guess the only way was down, anyway; better for them to go out while they were on top, so to speak, than to watch gravity slowly drag 'em all the way to my belly. Just think of it as a more extreme, very localized form of liposuction." I pause, seeing the look of extreme discomfort in his eyes. "They were pretty damn good, though," I add, hoping to lighten the mood. "You remember, don't you?"

  "I should get the paramedic," he replies wearily, standing up and climbing down from the back of the ambulance.

  "Are you angry?" I ask incredulously.

  "I'm tired," he replies. "I just wish you'd talked to me sooner."

  "About my boobs?"

  He doesn't reply.

  "Congratulations about the baby," I call after him.

  He turns to me.

  "I mean it," I add, trying to strike a conciliatory tone. "It's a good thing. I'm sure..." I take a deep breath as I realize I'm going to have to say words I never, ever thought I'd say. "I'm sure you and Elaine will be wonderful parents."

  "Your drip's done," he replies calmly. "I'll get the paramedic to unhook you."

  Once he's gone, I sit alone in the back of the ambulance. I swear to God, I feel like I just want to crawl under a blanket and never let anyone see me again. I'd been hoping that somehow I could hide my condition from Dawson forever, and I'd been taking comfort from the fact that he didn't know the truth about what was happening to me. Still, he doesn't know everything, and that's good. He doesn't know I'm dying, and I always like to keep at least one lie between us.

  John

  "Jesus Christ," I mutter as Leonard unlocks the padlock and pulls the wooden door open, immediately releasing a cloud of the most foul-smelling stench I've ever encountered in my life. For a moment, I turn my back to the door and cover my face with the sleeve of my jacket. "What the hell's going on in there?" I splutter. "It smells like a farmyard!"

  "Piss," he says, sounding bored. "Shit. Vomit. Sweat. God knows what else. I try not to think about it too much."

  "I need them to stay alive," I reply, trying not to retch.

  "I give 'em the antibiotics," he continues, "just like you wanted. I've got this friend who runs a pig farm, so I buy some of the drugs he uses."

  "Still..." I pause as I try to get used to the smell. It's a thousand times worse than I ever imagined.

  "I warned you," he replies matter-of-factly. "It's a waste of water to go dousing 'em down every day, so I just let 'em wallow in their own filth. It was good enough for the pigs on my friend's farm, so I reckon it's good enough for these fucking idiots. When you need to take one to get his photo taken, I can easily give him a quick swill and a haircut. I've become quite good at cutting hair, you know. Hell, maybe I should switch careers some time."

  After taking a moment to calm myself, I switch on the flashlight and turn back to look through the door. It's dark in the shed, but I can hear a kind of general moan, as if some of the assets are already reacting to my arrival.

  "Aren't they supposed to be asleep?" I ask.

  "It's hard to get 'em in a real routine," Leonard replies. "They don't really do anything during the day, so they're mostly not tired at night. They kinda just stay like this most of the time. Not asleep and not awake. Just... twitching."

  "Goddamn animals," I mutter, stepping through the door and shining the flashlight straight ahead. Sure enough, everything looks exactly the same as it looked the last time I was here: rows and rows of twisted, writhing men are chained to concrete blocks, with their curved, broken backs sticking up in the air. Although they're all wearing ragged clothing, it's quite clear just from looking at these people that they're developmentally sub-human. It's hard to believe that they could ever survive if we let them out of this place. What we're doing for them here is, in a way, far more humane than any treatment they'd receive in the real world.

  "There are no changes, really," Leonard explains as he steps through the door and joins me in the raised platform at the head of the room. "Same old story, really. They're just waiting for when you need one of them."

  "Good," I reply, shining the flashlight across the hunched, huddled figures. Most of them are curled up on the floor, either sleeping or pretending not to notice my arrival; as the light flickers across rows and rows or arched backs, however, I spot one or two assets who have dared to raise their heads and look directly at me. It gives me no pleasure to see the look of fear in their eyes, but it doesn't distress me either; the fear is simply part of the process, and it would benefit none of us to develop even the most basic of relationships. Besides, none of these fools can communicate with anything more than grunts and moans. I'm not even convinced that they can feel pain, since they lack the language skills necessary to form such complex ideas in their minds.

  "See?" Leonard says, standing next to me. "They're all completely fine. There's nothing to worry about."

  "That's what I thought about the Staten facility," I mutter, before stepping back out and waiting while Leonard re-locks the door. "We're down from three buildings to two," I continue after a moment. "That's a theoretical one third capacity reduction, although the loss is somewhat mitigated by the fact that the assets at the Staten location were all female. We can take the hit, but we can't afford any more losses. This has really pushed our backs against the wall."

  "Are you gonna replace the lost assets?" he asks, putting the key in his pocket as he leads me back across the yard.

  "There seems to be little point," I reply. "Besides, some of those women were reaching their twenty-second and twenty-third years. I should have cashed out on the older ones earlier. The simple truth is, there's not as much demand for women as there is for men." Pausing by the gate, I glance back at the barn, and suddenly I realize that Albert might have been right when he said that this mess was a blessing in disguise. After all, the operation has been running for years without an end in sight, and now I'm starting to contemplate the possibility of winding it all down. I could cash out over the next few months and finally go and do something respectable.

  "It's okay, boss," Leonard says after a moment. "You can trust me. Come rain or shine, I'll keep this place ticking over."

  "I know," I reply, turning to him. "Just hold the fort and wait for my next visit. I might stay low and skip Tuesday this week, but don't worry about anything. I've prepared for a moment like this, and soon we'll be back to normal. Just trust me when I say that the loss of one facility can in no way be linked to any of our other operations."

  "You don't have to persuade me," he says, pulling a lever that activates the gate. "I've been working here long enough to know that you're in charge of things. If Albert fucked things up at the Staten facility, then that was his mistake. Shame, I liked the guy, but still, it was nothing to do with you. Maybe I misjudged him. The last thing we need around here is a fool."

  "I hired him," I reply as I walk to my car. "I have to accept at least some of the responsibility."

  As I drive away, I can't help but glance in my rear-view mirror and watch as Leonard secures the gate. He's a good man, and he's the only person apart from myself who can be trusted to keep this operation running smoothly. Still, it might be time to look to the future and start thinking about winding things down. I'm in my forties now, and one day
I'd like to retire and actually enjoy the fruits of my labors. First, though, I need to get some rest. After the drama of the past twenty-four hours, I feel as if I'm about to collapse, and for some reason that I can't quite fathom, the sight of Sharon's dead body keeps playing on my mind.

  Katherine Shaw

  Somehow, with everything that has been happening tonight, I've managed to lose track of time. I'm kind of surprised, therefore, when I climb out of the back of the ambulance, rubbing the sore spot on my arm where the needle went in, and see that the first rays of morning sun are starting to show in the distance. It's actually kind of a beautiful sight, and for a moment I just stand and stare at the wonders of nature.

  "Fuck," I mutter finally, turning and looking over at the wreckage of the burned-out building. Forensic examiners are still crawling all over the place, and I guess they'll be continuing their microscopic analysis of the scene for days. As I wander over to the police cordon, trying to spot Dawson, I can't help but worry about what happened to me tonight. I was on the verge of a moment of inspiration, but then finally, just as it was about to strike, I passed out like a goddamn pussy. Is that how it's going to be from now on? Am I permanently fucked in the head?

  "Detective Shaw?" asks a voice nearby.

  Turning, I find a cop standing next to me.

  "Detective Dawson asked me to tell you that he was called back to the station," the cop continues, sounding a little unsure of himself. "He said to thank you for coming out, and he'll be in touch soon."

  "He's gone?" I ask, somewhat stunned to realize that Dawson didn't wait around for me. Glancing over my shoulder, I realize that his car is gone.

  "He asked me to arrange a ride for you back to the Wash house so you can get a lift home. He also gave me orders to arrest you if you try to drive your own vehicle while you're under the influence of alcohol." He pauses. "I'm sorry, that's just what he told me I had to do."

  "Huh," I mutter. Dawson's been pissed off at me before, and annoyed, and sad, and a hundred other things, but he always sticks around for the duration. Feeling a cold chill pass through my body, I try to think back to our earlier conversation in the ambulance and work out where I might have said anything to upset or offend him. After a moment, I realize that I didn't say anything bad at all, so he's obviously just got some kind of bee under his bonnet and it's blatantly not my fault. Damn it, what the hell is wrong with him?

  "Are you ready?" the cop asks.

  "Just give me a minute," I reply, walking past the cordon until I reach the forensic examiner we spoke to earlier. He's still working at the same spot, except this time he's managed to fully uncover a number of bones. I stare at them for a moment: charred and in some cases splintered, they look like the remains of people who died hundreds of years ago, and it's hard to accept that just a day or two ago, they were living, breathing women. "How's it going?" I ask after a moment. "Those look very human to me."

  "There were at least five women here when the place burned," he replies. "Possibly as many as eight, but I'm going to have to get back to the lab before I can give a definitive answer. The fire caused a lot of damage, and I think some pieces are still missing."

  "And they were all in this one spot?" I ask.

  "It seems that way."

  "Like they were huddled together," I continue, trying to imagine what it must have been like for them as the entire building burned around them.

  "Or piled up," he points out. "If I had to guess, based on the arrangement of the bones, I'd err on the side of them having been dead before the fire started, and then someone gathered their bodies together like this." He pauses, before turning to me. "Detective Dawson still thinks this is the result of cult activity, but I've been to that kind of crime scene and -"

  "I know," I say, interrupting him. "Dawson just likes to have a theory. Any theory'll do, even if it's wrong. He hates admitting that he doesn't know, so he usually just grabs the first thought that pops into his head and runs with it until I turn up and point out that he's being an idiot." I glance over at the spot where Dawson's car was parked earlier, and for a fraction of a second it occurs to me that maybe I could have been a little nicer to him; these thoughts quickly evaporate, however, as I remind myself that if he's offended or annoyed, it's entirely his own fault. If anything, I was too nice and too polite to him back in that ambulance. Whatever's up with him, I'm sure he'll be over it by the next time I see him.

  "You got any ideas?" the examiner asks. "So far, this site isn't making much sense to me. We've got plenty of pieces, but the overall picture just hasn't come together."

  "It will," I reply, turning and making my way across the wreckage until, finally, I'm standing in what appears to have been the center of the building. I look at the metal girders and realize that this place was basically one large enclosed structure with a high roof. It's exactly the kind of facility where someone would store animals; in fact, it reminds me of those barns where chickens are kept in little cages. The most obvious explanation, then, is that someone was farming those women and keeping them here because they wanted to use their bodies, but at the same time I'm getting the feeling that this was a commercial operation. Sure, there might be a few cannibals knocking around, but not enough to justify a human meat farm.

  I stand in silence for a moment.

  That moment of inspiration is still inside my mind, waiting to come out. It's almost as if my brain already knows the answer, and I just need to tease it out, but it's so much harder than it ever was before. Sometimes, I worry that those cancer drugs have caused permanent damage to the way my thoughts work, and that even though I've been off them for three months now, I'll never get back to my old brilliance.

  "Come on," I whisper, hoping against hope that I don't faint again. "Just one more time. I swear, just once more and I'll be happy. Give me this one."

  Closing my eyes, I wait.

  And that's when it comes.

  "Identities," I whisper, opening my eyes as I imagine all those women being chained up in this place, kept away from the outside world. Suddenly the whole goddamn thing seems so simple and so obvious, I can't believe I didn't see it sooner. Whoever was keeping these women captive wasn't doing it for their bodies or as part of some kind of sexual game, and it sure as hell wasn't a cult: it was an identity farm, where people could be raised until they reached a certain age, at which point their whole identities could be sold off to the highest bidders.

  It sounds crazy, but it make sense in a twisted kind of way.

  Reaching into my pocket, I pull out my phone and bring up Dawson's number, but at the last moment I pause as I realize that maybe he doesn't want to hear from me right now. Hell, after the way he treated me, I'm not even certain I should drop the answer in his lap so easily. Still, I'm absolutely goddamn certain that I'm right. Turning, I look across the wreckage and watch for a moment as the forensic examiner lifts a set of human bones onto a small black sheet.

  I'm right.

  I know I'm right.

  This was an identity farm, and if I had to put money on it, I'd bet there's at least one more out there. After all, the victims here were all female. Somewhere, there have to be men too.

  John

  This is crazy. I shouldn't be reacting like this, but I can't help it.

  It's almost 8am and I'm sitting in my car, watching as sunrise slowly transforms the street from a dark and foreboding place to a pretty little suburban thoroughfare, lined with trees and neat, well-maintained houses. The horrors of last night seem to have fallen away completely, like the last remembered ashes of a nightmare. In many ways, this street is the American Dream writ large, with picket fences and lawn sprinklers as far as the eye can see. I can still remember when I was a kid and I used to walk the long way home from school just so that I could pass by houses like this; I knew from an early age that I wanted a quiet, normal life, but it took me a while to work out how to get what I desired.

  And now I'm sitting here, quietly sobbing.

&nb
sp; The truth is, I feel desperately sad about Sharon's death, and about the death of our two children. They were good people and they deserved nothing but happiness, yet they had the misfortune to have me as a husband and father. Sniffing back more tears, I think back to the moment when I pulled the trigger and ended Sharon's life, and I can't help but wonder whether, in that split second, she knew what was happening. Did she realize that I was killing her? Did she feel pain? Did she suspect that she was married to a monster and that he was finally showing his true colors?

  And what about the children? I tried to make their deaths quick and painless, and I think I succeeded, but there are always a few doubts. Might they, too, have had some inkling of what their father was about to do to them? Eliza was perhaps too young to really understand, but did Kieran have a moment of realization before the bullet split his head open? At least the silencer meant that each of them could be killed in order, without the next waking up. I hate it when people have time to scream.

  Still, I did the right thing. If they'd lived, they might have found out the truth about me. Sharon thought I was on the road all the time, selling insurance in distant cities. She used to ask why I couldn't just use the internet to do my work, but I always told her that I specialized in the personal touch, and eventually she came to understand that I'd be away for weeks on end, but also that I'd make the most of our time together whenever I managed to get home. She was happy with her life, and I could never have let her endure its collapse. She would have suffered far more, and for far longer, if she'd lived and the truth about my facilities had become known.

  Realizing that the tears have stopped, I take one final look at my eyes in the rear-view mirror and then I get out of the car, pushing the door shut and taking a step back before brushing my suit down and making sure that I'm neat and tidy. Walking around to the rear of the car, I open the trunk and take out one of my three briefcases, before slamming the trunk closed and starting the short trip along the sidewalk and then, finally, up the driveway that leads to one of the nearby houses.