Clutch

by JA Huss

  He pauses then. "Ya still with me, Junco?"

  I sigh. "Yeah."

  "The RR kept you, Junco, only you. They gave ya to a local couple who couldn't have children, and gave them the privilege of Farm Family status. From what I can tell, they treated ya right for a while. But I don't know that for sure, so stop me if I get it wrong. I don't know everything, Junco. Not much at all, in fact. But enough to tell you this story."

  I look back at him. "How do you really know I'm that girl? The avian child? You weren't there, you're not that much older than me, so you were a small child back then too." I see the disappointment in his eyes as the words are coming out of my mouth, but I don't care.

  "Before ya seven were taken back by the RR, the avians grabbed DNA samples from each child. I ran yer sample myself that night on the hill. You're one of them."

  I just lie there, not quite sure if I should be sad, angry, or defiant.

  "When I killed the others at the Stag Camp, that night ya hit the deer, I found more of these same creatures."

  "What happened to them?"

  He just shook his head.

  I turn over and show him my back. "What else?"

  "Your parents–"

  "Stop. That's enough, OK. I get it. My parents were good people, Tier. My father loved me and I had everything a kid could ever ask for."

  "And did that love include visits to your Uncle Dale's compound of genetic mutants over the years, eh?"

  "There were never any monsters out at the Stag, I think I would have remembered that."

  "Not if they didn't want ya to, Junco."

  "OK, fine. My parents were monsters, too. Got it."

  "Do ya want to know what happened to the others, then?"

  "What others?"

  "Your siblings?"

  I stay silent, but I guess the question was rhetorical, because he turns me back around and answers anyway. "So obviously ya know Moju. But what ya don't know is how he grew up. The MR kept him in a cage for the first thirteen years. They morphed him early, at fourteen, and when he came out of it they taught him every which way he could torture and kill. You know what that name means, Junco? Moju?"

  I look up at him now, my mouth drawn down and my eyes squinting.

  "It literally refers to a sick and twisted psycho-sexual predator. He gave himself that name, Junco. A little telling, eh?"

  "That's bullshit. He was perfectly rational and normal when I talked to him."

  "He remembers ya, Junco, even if ya don't remember him. They didn't give him the drugs to dampen down his nightmares. You were right about one thing though. I was just pissed that you figured it out so quick." He stops and looks at me for a second. "If he appears normal to ya, it's only because he loves ya and wants to spare ya the pain of knowing who he is and what he's done. But make no mistake, he's a psychotic sonofabitch. If he'd of come out of that tunnel he would have promised ya all kinds of things to keep ya on Earth. Every lie your heart wants to hear right now. Everything you want me to say, but I won't. And then–"

  "Then what? He'd change into a psychopath and tear my arms off in the night?"

  "Lying to ya, to get ya to stay would be the equivalent scenario. If you don't complete the morph before yer twenty, you'll die all on your own. Our genetics are made so that they need this renewal, Junco. Maybe it's not a punishment like the story says, but it is real. And not morphing has consequences."

  "And you?" I ask defiantly. "Are you a psychopathic killer as well?"

  "Me? Yes. Me too. I've killed more people than I can count. And I don't shed a tear for any of them. Even your father."

  I shoot up out of bed. "What did you say?"

  But he just stares at me.

  "WHAT DID YOU SAY?" I scream.

  "It's true. It was me who took his last breath, but only to put him out of his misery."

  "Misery! What misery?" I scream again, and then he clamps his hand over my mouth.

  "Shhhh."

  "Don't you tell me to be–"

  But his hand presses tighter and cuts off my words. "That's enough." His words burn with anger as they came out and so I force myself to settle down.

  "I asked ya if you wanted the truth before this started, and ya said yes. I, on the other hand, urged you to reconsider." He lifts his hand and I fling myself away from him and sit up on the bed, wanting to get up and walk out, but not sure if I should push it and piss him off any more.

  "You said if I stayed with Aren I'd end up like my father. You made me believe that he had something to do with it! And now" – I half turn my face towards him – "I find out you're the asshole who ruined my life."

  He puts a hand up and squeezes the flesh above the bridge of his nose, like I am giving him a headache. "I'm not done, Junco. Do ya want to hear the rest of the truth? Or should we just leave it at that and you can go and throw yer hissy fit?"

  "There's more? Who else did you kill? My first goldfish? My dog? Any of my avian siblings?"

  "Yer father begged me to kill him, Junco. It was a merciful act–"

  "FUCK YOU!" I scream as I get up to flee the bedroom.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  I don't get but a few paces before he yanks me back by the arm. "Let go of me, Tier," I say between gritted teeth. He just looks at me and shakes his head.

  "No, darlin', you asked for the truth and if I let you go now, you only have half the story."

  "I don't want to know any more, OK? So don't bother."

  He shakes his head again. "Sorry, Junco. You're gonna get it this part whether you like it or not. So get back in here and sit down." His command makes me jump a little, but I try to pull my arm from his grip anyway. He resists and pulls again. I look up at his face and see the anger in his eyes and give in. "Fine, talk," I say as I sit down on the bed.

  He sits next to me and I move away from him, like I'm in third grade and he's got the cooties. I feel a little juvenile at my reaction, but not for long because his words begin to spill out once more and I'm forced to hear it through to the end.

  "Yer father, Junco, was absolutely in on the cover-up of who ya were and where ya came from. I've looked at this from every angle, and there is no way to deny it. Yer da took you to the Stag twice a year. I found the medical records to match that schedule when I was there last week. They–" He stops here and I'm afraid to say anything, so I just sit quietly. Finally the silence drags on too long and I have to look up to see if he will continue.

  "They what?" I ask.

  He just shakes his head and looks down at the ground.

  "What? Just fucking say it!"

  "They changed ya. That's all I know right now, they changed ya – somehow and for some reason."

  I lie back on the bed and feel the tears come quickly. "What did they do to me?"

  When he finally speaks, his voice is soft, barely a whisper. "I don't know for sure, Junco. Made ya more" – he stops for a moment – "avian, I think. Took yer human parts away."

  My head spins and I have to close my eyes and press my fists into my eye-sockets to make it stop.

  "I'm not sorry for killing your da, like I said, he asked me to finish it. But I am sorry this is your fucked-up life. Ya don't deserve it."

  I don't have anything to add so I lie there with my silent tears streaming down my cheeks.

  "Where did yer father die, Junco?"

  I screw up my face, thinking for several minutes. I'm trying, I'm looking, but I can't find that memory anywhere.

  "Convenient, isn't it?"

  I grunt. "What's convenient? Quit fucking with me and just say it, Tier."

  "It was in a church, do ya remember that?"

  I am back in the dream the first night I met Tier, out on the hill in the Stag. I'm a figure in a stained-glass window. I let out a deep breath. "A church?"

  He nods his head. "There was a meeting, some secrets were leaked about what was going on in the Stag. They were making plans for ya, Junco."

  He looks down to see if I am followin
g what he's saying. My face must look confused, because then he breaks it down into smaller bits for me. "Yer da was gonna sell ya, Junco."

  The laugh comes out too quick and even to me, it sounds forced. "OK."

  He shrugs. "It's the truth."

  "And then you magically show up and kill him? What? To save me?" I let out a snort. "That's bullshit."

  "No, Junco. I had no intention of saving ya. Like I said, I only put him out of his misery. Do ya remember any of this?"

  "No," I lie, "not one bit."

  "I was watching you for a long time already, when that night came for yer da to die. But there were some" – he hesitates and I know he's choosing his words carefully – "unusual developments – leading up to that night. Yer da was called to the church in Ramah. I watched the whole meeting through a third-story stained-glass window, so I didn't catch all of it, but enough." He looks down at me. "I saw enough. The killer tortured yer da until he passed out from the pain."

  He stops and looks up at the ceiling before he finds his voice again. "I killed seventeen people that night. Including your da. But I let the torturer go."

  "What?" I turn to look at him. "Why?"

  He looks me straight in the face but he doesn't answer that question. "I'm sorry for a lot of things, Junco, but I'm not sorry for taking a single life in that church."

  My mind is racing, trying to put it all together. The thought that's been nagging at me, eating away at me, finally surfaces. "They have more clones of me, don't they?" It isn't exactly a question, but more something I needed to say out loud to make it real.

  "Aye, you can bet on it. And they had a lot of plans for ya – plans you weren't necessarily on board with."

  We sit there for a long time and eventually he climbs back into bed next to me, but he doesn't pull me close and I don't move towards him either. My mind is jumbled with the new information and I frantically rack my brain to try and remember something, anything that will corroborate this story outside of that dream. But there is nothing there.

  I fake sleep after a while. Finally, just after dawn, Tier gets up and takes a tech device to the other room.

  I get up too. But not to check on him or see what he's doing.

  I open the window, slip out in silence, and run like hell through the woods.

  I expect to be caught by him within the first few minutes, but I run on and on and on. Up the hill, over the patch of medium grass which outlined the place I called the meadow when I was a kid, into the conifers, and towards the only people I know to go to.

  My feet falter and I trip more than once as my heart pounds with adrenaline. My breath comes out in long hard gasps as I make my way through the forest. Finally I have to stop. I bend over and grab my chest with one hand and lean my other against a thickly barked pine. I feel the sticky resin on my fingertips as I try to get myself under control.

  In my mind, Tier is the liar. Not my father, not my Council, not my country.

  Tier.

  I feel it in my heart. I know it.

  I look around and see shadows from the trees and all I think of are those dark wings and long talons waiting to take me back to the nightmare.

  And so I run again.

  Because to stay, to accept everything he told me without question, would be betrayal.

  Treason.

  Maybe there is some secret program that creates inhuman monsters from the genetics of children. Maybe I am an avian. Maybe my father willingly allowed me to be subjected to experimentation and cloning and was about to sell me.

  Maybe.

  I may be sheltered from most of the horrible things in the world living in the RR, and I may be naive in certain ways. But I am not stupid. And it would be the epitome of stupid to willingly allow everything – my life, my family, and every rule I've ever lived by – to be wiped out by one good-looking guy with wings who tells me they are false.

  My legs burn as I climb a steep hill that will take me into the outlying area of the Baumer farm and when I get to the top, I stop.

  The view is incredible and I can see everything. Including the large mass of soldiers who are at my house in the distance.

  Of course they are at my house! They are looking for me, I'm an RR citizen who was kidnapped by an alien. I've been missing for, hell, I have no idea. My days are so mixed up. A week, I think. I'm a prominent Farm Family daughter, World Grand Champion Mounted Aerialist. I'm probably on the front page of every newscreen on the planet.

  I strain my eyes to make out details at my property and I see plenty of military vehicles, but I also see many farm trucks as well and I breathe a sigh of relief. The military isn't there to kidnap and hold me as a state secret. If they were, then my neighbors wouldn't be allowed to just pull in the farm and park their trucks.

  They're waiting for me to come home.

  The tears stream down my face as I accept that thought as truth and I feel a flood of stress flow out of me. These people love me. I'm not a freak, I'm not an alien.

  I'm just Junco.

  They're worried about me.

  I get back under the cover of the pine needles and make my way down the hill to the modest farmstead below, wiping the tears from my face, and taking a moment to catch my breath and find some calm.

  I am just about to the edge of the clearing, where the crunchy carpet of needles meets the grass that will take me to the Baumer's driveway, when the doubt creeps in.

  I stop.

  And look up into the trees and make out a shadow standing on a branch.

  It's Tier.

  My heart skips, literally skips and flutters so bad I think I will die on the spot from a heart attack, and I cannot breathe.

  He smiles. "Go ahead, Junco. Go see for yourself. Tell them everything I said. Don't leave out one word."

  I bend over to try and calm myself as the hyperventilation takes over. I don't hear him come down, but he's next to me, putting his hand on my back, bending over to try and see my face, saying nothing.

  In between my sharp gasps for air I manage to speak. "I'm. Not. Coming."

  "I know, Junco."

  But I can't stop talking now. "You're lying. I–"

  I what? I can't finish my sentence. So I just drop to the forest floor and sit, and try to regain some control over my body. He drops down next to me and leans back against the tree trunk, letting me stay that way for a long time. But even after that, nothing makes sense.

  I am playing with the long-dead pine needles on the ground when he finally speaks. "If ya have these doubts, Junco, then go. I want ya ta come on yer own, I want to make it a choice. I don't want to steal ya away, I really don't."

  I sniff loudly, desperately trying to control my running nose, and then get to my feet. "But you will if you have to? Is that what you're saying underneath those nice words?"

  He stays silent.

  I wipe my hand across my nose and find my voice. "I'm going home. If you want to stop me, then go ahead, but I'm not walking away from my life just because you tell me some far-fetched story about monsters." And I turn and step out in the grass.

  He doesn't snatch me up or call out to me. As far as I can tell he doesn't even get up off the forest floor. So I just keep walking forward until I reach the driveway, then follow it up to the house.

  The Baumer place is a very traditional farmhouse complete with a large covered front porch. When I reach it, I stop and turn back to look into the trees for a moment. Tier is still there, standing now, just on the edge of the shadows that fall around the branches. For the first time I realize that we're wearing matching hunting gear. Snow camo pants and jacket with a white t-shirt. He crosses his arms and waits for me to make the final decision. I turn my head and climb the porch stairs and force myself to knock on the door.

  Mrs. Baumer answers and when she sees me she begins to cry, taking me by the shoulders and asking me questions. I look back at the woods once more, but he's gone, and then her husband appears and the old couple ushers me over the threshold and
into the familiar farmhouse.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Mrs. Baumer has me in the tiny downstairs bathroom with the door closed and she's talking a mile a minute, but I just stand there and let her wash my face, even around my puffy eyes, and it stings when the soap touches each and every cut and bruise. I can hear Mr. Baumer in the kitchen down the hallway, talking to someone on a com tech.

  Mrs. Baumer's flushed face is right in front of me then, like she's waiting for an answer, but I never heard the question. "What?" I ask.

  She softens up when she hears my voice. "Your fingers, Junco. What happened to your fingers?"

  I forgot all about my missing fingers to be quite honest. And right now, I really don't want to be reminded.

  "Did he chop them off, dear?"

  I look at her for a minute, my brow in a furrow I'm sure, then try and imagine Tier chopping off my fingers, but that's something I can't see in my mind's eye at all. "No," I finally say. "A nightdog ate them."

  She gasps and begins tearing off the bandages that I had also forgotten all about. I look down and they are filthy with dirt and grime and dried blood. How could I have forgotten about my missing fingers?

  She keeps pulling, looking up at my face to see if she is hurting me, but she isn't. And I don't stop her. So she continues. "What kind of bandage is this?" she asks, more to herself than to me. But I answer anyway.

  "Avian. It's an avian membrane."

  It takes forever to unwrap the long tissue-thin swathe of synthetic textile and the air tickles with cold as it rushes in to fill the space. She continues to peel the bandage off, again looking up to see if she is hurting me. But she's not. By the time she removes the last layer and my fingers come into view I am less surprised that they are healed than I would have been if they were mangled. Mrs. Baumer lets out a curt "Hmph," and then throws the bandages in the trash.

  I bring my fingers up to my face to see them better. They were bitten off at the first joint from the bottom, so there is really nothing left of them. The skin is white and smooth, like any newly formed scar, and I find that I have very little control over what they do and when they do it. If I wiggle them, they don't really move, but I still feel the missing parts that should be attached.