Women of the Grey- The Complete Trilogy

by Carol James Marshall

  “Ahhh comadre…calm eh…We gave you that boy, we only came to take him back.” The lead Mother held out her hands, “Andale, don’t worry.”

  Lisa stood in the back, head throbbing and feeling overwhelmed. They gave her that boy? They, The Grey, gave her the baby? But, he’s a boy…Lisa looked at Rafael. A boy that looks just like every girl in The Grey. What the fuck…what the fuck! Lisa knew that Rafael wasn’t random—nobody is random. She kicked the nearest Mother in the back, shoved another Mother and started throwing punches. Rafael’s mom jumped, watching as the leader’s head was slammed into the floor.

  “LEAVE!” Lisa screamed at Augustine, “They’ll kill him! LEAVE!”

  The last glance that Lisa had of Rafael was his tio running out the door with him in his arms. She hoped that he got away. The last time she saw Rafael’s mom was when the lead Mother sliced her throat. Then, Lisa felt another blow to the head and everything went black.

  Lisa felt her body being tossed on the floor and someone was slapping her face, “Wake up super tits…you’re home now.” Lisa looked around and sat up. Before her stood Superior Mother.

  “She was brought back alive and kinda well, as you wished. Three marks were dealt with; the boy got away for now,” the lead Mother took a step back from Superior Mother and Lisa.

  Lisa knew that now, at the very least, she would find out where the naughty girls went. She would learn what happens to them. She wanted to talk; she wanted to plead for Rafael’s life, but the words wouldn’t come. They stayed stuck to her tongue and crawled around her teeth, but wouldn’t come out. She looked at Superior Mother; there was no way she would listen to someone has loathsome as she was. She betrayed them all to her marks.

  She was a nothing.

  Superior Mother walked over to Lisa, nodded at her, and placed her hand on Lisa’s forehead. Then, it all went white.

  Red Drug

  Women of the Grey Book 2

  The Quiet Man

  He watched her feet wiggle in different directions at the edge of his truck bed. Her toes were long—the toenails unpainted and her skin was sickeningly white. There was nothing redeeming about her feet; yet he felt like holding them. It was a constant conundrum between the two of them. He considered her a riddle and himself a pun; it was, in his view, an over romanticized version of relationships. But, it's what let him sleep at night next to this bony creature he called his woman.

  He didn't know what else to call her. His life was private. He kept to himself and never wanted for attention or power. What he wanted was silence—time to contemplate his world without interruption. He could sit happily, rubbing his dog’s ears, and watching the stars night after night. Not once did the thought of anything else ever bother him. He was, in a sense, the true definition of minding his own business.

  Then, she happened. It was the kind of day that he usually spent with his truck—washing it, changing its oil, or maybe just looking under the hood even if it was running like a champ. That day, a day that was meant for mundane guy stuff, was the day he heard a car coming down his lonely dirt road. Then, he could hear the sound of the engine quitting. Why in the hell would someone even be on my road in the first place? He wondered as he grabbed his shot gun. He was geared up to run somebody off of his property with a few warning shots. Yeah, that’s what he’d do—with nothing but testosterone, his gun, and a little fight in his spit. He immediately noticed a curious looking woman in the driver’s seat. She said her car had just stopped; she didn’t know why it stopped, and she was lost—didn’t know where she was headed either. A little doe in the middle of nowhere.

  He stood there, shot gun in hand, feeling like he was holding his heart. She was so tiny, skinny; the type of girl who could beg for help without saying a word. It didn’t matter if she actually needed help or not; you’d want to help her. She simply drew the kindness out of you. This was hard for him; he was never easily swayed by women, but here she was—an emergency in a flowered dress. Suddenly, he was so wrapped up in playing super hero for this girl that he forgot to ask the facts—why was she here, on this road; how did she get lost; where did she come from; why couldn’t she go back? Never realizing it, never even remembering it, he lost himself in that teeny girl. He offered her his couch that night. Despite his confusion, she stayed the next day also. Unexplainably, a week had passed, and it was never clear to him how he was suddenly coming home from work and she was cooking his dinner and crawling into his bed.

  Now, four months later, she lay in his truck bed wiggling her boney feet—attached to her boney legs, and hip bones that stuck out for miles. He'd wake up at night chilled to the bone with her—a frozen toothpick stuck to his side. All of this he accepted, but never really understood how it happened. He just considered her a question mark in his book.

  She rolled over on him, sticking her hands up his shirt and allowing them to wander all over his chest. He sighed. This was another thing he just accepted—that she would do this. She tended to be intrusive of his space without a thought about it, as if her body was connected to his. She never needed permission to enter his life, or home, or to man-handle him any way she pleased. The skinny creature had a power over him that he himself did not feel comfortable with; yet he was close to almost enjoying it.

  She kissed his neck and breathed into his ear, all while rubbing his belly like he was a dog. Her fingers floated from his neck to his stomach and back. It was an icy touch; he’d never known a person to be so cold. He imagined her heart locked up in a block of ice. She mistook his shiver of cold for pleasure, and once again, he accepted that she was in control of it all. Those icicle fingers never gave him a chance to fuss. She’d caught him before he even realized he needed to run.

  The kissing went on, and lastly, she nuzzled his side. He was grateful that she took a hint from him and was usually quiet. What she said, she meant, and when she spoke, it was worth hearing. There was never endless chatter from her. He never knew if that was how she was or what she had learned from him.

  “I’m pregnant...” She said, then yawned as if she had just mentioned dinner was ready. She then put her feet against his without questioning whether or not he’d warm them for her; she assumed he would, and she was right.

  He had no answer. Instead, he nodded and rubbed her hair. A private man. A quiet man. A man who lived contently in the shadows was now a man who would have a tiny shadow of his own.

  The Thinker

  Spindly—

  a blonde spider.

  She spun her web,

  I fell in.

  He watched her swing on his mom’s porch swing. Often, he’d say these little poems to himself, but never bothered to write them down. It was a way to ease the mind—little poems, small rhymes, a tiny song, all galloping around his skull. It seemed much better than spewing endless nonsense from his mouth, like his father. His life’s goal was to not be anything like his father. His father was a loud man that barked and barked, but never bit a soul. In a way, that was great, he was louder than life itself, but it was exhausting to have someone around who felt the need to constantly deflect his thoughts to the world. It seemed much better to think things through thoroughly—send them through the washer and the dryer before trying them out. When he did that, his thoughts seemed to pour out with a measure of intelligence.

  She got up from the porch swing looking all but fifteen years old—a skeleton with a summer dress hanging off its bones. She swore to him that she was twenty-two and had an ID to prove it. Still, she seemed like she hadn’t finished puberty. Some days she looked like she hadn’t started it either. Sitting down on the grass near him, she stretched out across his lap and stuck a foot up his shirt—shamelessly attempting to flirt.

  “Jeez girl, those feet of yours are always ice cold.” But, he held them anyway and started to pull her towards him—one icy chunk of skin at a time. from the day he met her it had become his mission to warm her up. Daily, hourly, every second he could, he’d grab her and pull her near hi
m thinking that, maybe this time, he’d hold her long enough to warm the prickly ice off her skin.

  Now, they both lay shamelessly on the grass, not bothering to notice the neighborhood kids yelling at each other while riding bikes or the little old lady across the street who thought he was too good for her scrawny ass. Neither bothered to see his father looking out the kitchen window, wondering what his son saw in her.

  Abigail

  Leaving The Grey for the second time was welcome orders for Abigail. She hated it in there—the continuous glare of the Mothers, the constant supervision of Superior Mother. It never ended, and until this mission was complete, she would get a bedroom to herself—which was like a slice of apple pie kind of prize; one small space to call her own without the worry of prying eyes.

  Here in this little house, Abigail thought it was better. It was a silent house that was warm and simple. Surrounding her was all wood, trees, and nature—nothing steel or cold to creep up her skin and make her itch. Going out onto the porch, Abigail could see trees for miles with nothing but dirt and leaves under her feet.

  Dirty feet were awesome. Abigail couldn’t really think of much else, other than how good it felt to be barefoot with her toes sunk in dirt. Nobody was around to wrinkle their noses over her feet being dirty and her dress being stained. Nobody was around to tell her not to wear a dress. Being ‘all the same’ is so awful, she thought. In The Grey, earth was for growing vegetables and fruit, not for sinking toes in. In The Grey, all the floors were cement that was polished until it sparkled. The cement was cold, with no texture or feel to it. Abigail wiggled her toes deeper in the dirt; dirt was better.

  The guy with her was great. He was warm with big hands. Nobody ever told her about male hands. They were large and powerful. His hands felt so genuine rubbing her back. His touch wasn’t practiced or scripted. He touched her because he wanted to and wasn’t told to. This was such a revolutionary thing to Abigail; after all of the instruction in The Grey—all the mothering and labeling—she couldn’t understand how she had not once been told, not one whisper, about a man’s hands.

  But, she guessed it was because there were no men in The Grey. They were all the same—female. Those that had gone on to breed with males came back deaf and mute on what it was like. Probably because they understood that if the rest of the women knew how wonderful it was to be held against them, to feel their hands on your back, any strategy Superior Mother gave would be insignificant in comparison.

  She could feel him watching her again. He was nodding his head like he agreed with himself on any kind of topic. I wonder if he’ll keep me. I hope he keeps me. I hope the Mothers leave me alone and let me stay. I want to stay in this silent house with the guy’s hands wrapped in mine, Abigail thought grimly, knowing that sooner or later those Mothers would come, and when they did, it could go pretty or ugly.

  “Abigail, we can do this pretty or we can do this ugly; your choice honey pie…your choice,” Mother 28, Cecilia, had said that stupid line to her back when Abigail didn’t want to leave her first mission. She remembered that moment as if it was stuck to her with sap. Looking at her guy now, and knowing what she did, Abigail kept repeating it in her head, we can do this pretty or we can do this ugly. Maybe if she said it enough, it would purge from her thoughts. It hadn’t worked yet, but she kept trying and failing.

  Abigail stuck her tongue out to her guy; she didn’t want the ugly.

  Teresa

  The hardest thing about being with a man was pretending to have interest in his words, ideas, and actions. She couldn’t care less what he did, but that didn’t seem like the right strategy. It didn’t seem proper. I guess… fuck if I know, Teresa thought.

  She didn’t know how to act with him. She’d try a little of this or a little of that—mostly stuff she saw on TV—doing her best to disguise that she was at a loss about how to socialize. There was no need to socialize in The Grey when you were with the same people all day every day; people who all have the same goal. What was the point of socializing? Seduction for friendship or sex was not necessary in The Grey. Superior Mother, with her endless supply of ill-conceived choices, believed it was best to toss the women raw and green to the humans, to figure out their ways. Teresa giggled to herself; she could bet Superior Mother, in all her vast wisdom, would never envision that some—perhaps most—of those women preferred the human way. But, that was not Teresa. Those were only fat rumors she had heard among the other women, when everyone was pretending that they did not, in fact, gossip.

  Teresa hadn’t figured the humans out, and she didn’t want to. Complete bullshit… all of it, she thought. They needed human males in order to reproduce their kind. To Teresa, it seemed barbaric and unclean. The worst part about it, the part where she held the most shame, was that she loved sex. Damn it, I could drown in it, she admitted to herself. She hadn’t expected to like it. At first, she had only wanted to get it done, like a chore—like mopping the floor or learning math. But instead, the nasty of it was intoxicating and made her hungry for more every time.

  Teresa truly hated that about herself. It’s so beneath me! I’m lowering myself to the sexual inclinations of a chimp. She hated that she wanted to crawl her way back to the male again and again, asking or begging for more of it. She always felt ashamed after and there was no amount of soap that made her feel any bit better about herself. She looked at the male now, thinking, We are so much more superior in The Grey compared to these humans; especially the males. And yet, here I am back in his bed with nothing but contempt for myself after. It’s a disgusting cycle of want and vomit.

  Lisa

  In The White, there was nothing but cold and words. The words spoken were hard—so hard that they sat on her like a car tire. The words thundered over and over again. They were in a language that was unspeakable and impossible to explain. There was no way to write these words down or record them. There wasn’t a way to catch them in the air, even though she could feel them. Each word, when it came down on her, was a message that was felt to the core of who she once was.

  These words were physically painful, pushing and shoving Lisa like a bully. The words were the leader, and she must bow to them. She was to mend her ways to understand who she was. Lisa would know that, whatever it was she believed, was nonsense. The words told her, you are a pawn, nothing more. In The White, time was seamless and unneeded; she was to stay there until she was retrieved or forgotten.

  It was endless now. Lisa didn’t know how long she’d been in The White. She remembered Superior Mother touching her, then white, and nothing more. The words’ constant pounding on her were the acts of a rapist. She didn’t know if she was asleep or awake. There were times when she would wake up from a nightmare about being in The White, only to realize instantly that she was still there. The nightmare was not over, not finished, not even close.

  Lisa clawed around this space, feeling the words watch and judge her. She was mentally begging for leniency, pity, but she couldn’t speak. Her words didn’t matter. It’s blinding in here, she thought, wincing in pain. It was so white and clean that it dazed the skull. I always preferred the dirt. I’d rather have my kitchen floor in that crappy, dirty apartment than this sparkly clean hell.

  The words twisted her, poked at her, churned her guts until she couldn’t think or move; she could only lay there, forcing her eyes closed to block out some of The White. It was impossible. The pain pried her eyes open. The second she aimed for rest, it punched her in the heart. Over and over the words wanted to cleanse Lisa—to make her understand that, “We are all the same, none different. You are not special; you are one of us, nothing more.” The words rained on Lisa until she finally stood and shook her fist, trying her best to fight. I can’t help my thoughts! I can’t help my actions! I can’t control being an empath to the humans. I can’t control the empathy. I absorb it, and it crawls all over me and makes its way deep within me. She wanted to roar against this force of words like a teenager arguing with her parents. I
have a right to be; I have a right to think as I think.

  Yet, when she did, the words tossed her down, trying to get her to lie on her back as they pounded and pounded until they went up her nose, in her ears, and needled their way through her eyes. Despair hadn’t kicked in yet; it took longer than a person would think for it to happen. The onslaught of words, the crushing of her very being, took precedent over having any time for despair. Despair takes down time; it’s something that happens when nothing else is happening, and when the words were forcing her to pay attention to them with every syllable they uttered, she had no time for despair.

  There was no time for pity either. Pity was something that lingered with despair; the two were close cousins. They lived in the same family, they ate the same meals, and sometimes they shared a bed. Despair and pity were emotions for the fortunate to have, because if you have time for them, then you have time.

  In The White, there was a crushing of the words, it was a ruthless slamming of, “We are all the same and none different.” The words pushed this concept at Lisa, trying to shove it inside every cavity of her body. It was abusive, it was cruel, it was the purest sense of who the women of The Grey actually were that Lisa had ever gotten.

  These words were a relentless harassment in getting Lisa to understand the mission—to get her to understand that she was not important, that being an empath was like being a drug addict. Empathy is an addiction to the human, sloppy ways of their world. Every word taught Lisa what she truly was, but taught it in fuzzy lines. Nothing was clear. The path swayed one way, then the other. How can I follow the doctrine of my race when the doctrine is scribbled and not clear to read?