STRAIGHT TO THE CORE

There he stood, framed by the burnt orange sunset and the wheat fields stretching to the horizon in golden hues, waving slightly. He stood there looking like he had caught fire.

He stared at me and opened his mouth. He tried to take a step forward. I watched the thought travel to its ending, when he looked down at his unmoving feet in half-amused shock.

“Catch me,” I said, and ran.

Wheat brushed my calves like whiskers. I chanced a look back—he wouldn’t be following.

He was still there, standing, realizing now why he couldn’t make his legs move. Realizing where all the blood was coming from.

We were in the barn earlier, laying in the straw and letting it poke us through our clothes.

“Daddy says you need to lend a hand if you wanna stay,” I told him. But Daddy didn’t want him to stay, not at all. Daddy had given me two days, and then he would get out his shotgun and start hunting.

He was a city boy and wouldn’t stand a chance against Daddy, no matter how badly I wanted him to. I couldn’t let it come to that.

He was eager to learn, always. He helped me shovel manure and feed the pigs, and he watched them eat and snort, leaning over the fence. All day, I watched him smiling and thinking of how we would be that night, all wrapped up together. Maybe he would push his hands up under my skirt. Maybe I wanted that.

I told him the last thing we needed to do was the harvest. I gave him the long, curved blade for cutting wheat, and he looked at it like the moon and made a sound through his teeth.

“Careful,” I giggled. “It’s sharp!”

We went out in the field together, walking so far I could almost imagine us walking and never coming back, and the farmhouse disappeared behind us. That was when he set his blade in the wheat and pulled me on top of him so that we were hidden. He tasted like manure and sweat, and I sucked him in like I was shriveled up with drought, and drank because I wouldn’t have the chance again.

But I made him stop, even though his body was heavy and didn’t want to move. When he got up, there were pink imprints of wheat on his arms below his sleeves.

I told him to back up a few paces so I could show him how to do it, swinging my blade with the force of my shoulders and hips. It cut through the wheat perfectly, splitting stalks like butter. They all fell on top of each other, tired and laid out.

“You try.”

He did the same, but his swing was too hard, all through the forearms.

“No, here. Your hips.”

He tried again, this time with a more fluid motion, and I smiled to show him he had done well.

We cut wheat side by side, getting in sync with each other. He cut down his stalks—I cut down mine. And then I told him I was tired, but he should keep on going.

From behind, I could see how intent he was. How he wanted to be good. Sweat had soaked through his shirt, the muscles popping and working underneath. And I thought too, it was really such a shame.

So for every step he took, I took two quiet ones. I practiced swings. My blade thwacked inches from the knees of his blue jeans. Just a little farther and the denim would have split to threads, maybe even drawn blood.

He paused like he was tired. He straightened up and turned to look at me, wiping his forehead. But my scythe was already in the air.

A slick, perfect cut. All the way through. So perfect he didn’t even fall like the wheat. He just stood there, looking at me.

***

From the edge of the field, I watched the top half of him finally slide away from the bottom. His hands still worked in the wheat stalks, clawing while his legs stood upright. And then his knees buckled and fell slowly.

With any luck, Daddy wouldn’t find him out here before winter. And when the first thaw came, he would only be fragments of bones.

IT STICKS TO YOU

He was covered in it, that’s what I remember. Like iridescent scales all over his body. It made the flashing nightclub lights shimmer off of him through the haze. Only his eyes were left uncovered. Unlike the rest of him, they were black.

I wish I could say that all we did was dance. That it ended there. That I wasn’t scrubbing his scales off of me in the shower for weeks. I would cough and find them in my morning coffee. They were in my eyelashes and under my fingernails. Stuck places I couldn’t reach. I gathered up my clothes from that night and burned them in a dumpster to keep them from seeding shiny particles deep into the carpet.

When I met my husband, his skin was smooth. Clear. None of it rubbed off in my hands, worked itself under my tongue. Sometimes I worried, finding flakes of dandruff on his scalp that looked like scales. Sometimes the way his eyes caught the light made me think of that mesmerizing shimmer, the way it had rippled over him, moving before he moved. Reminded me of the way it felt.

But when I searched myself, I found myself clean.

Our daughter wasn’t planned, but that didn’t matter. The moment I felt her move inside me, I knew I loved her. She would be half me, always part of me.

While I waited for her, I was terrified that something would go wrong. Her heart would stop. She would choke. She would be born without eyes. I picked at my skin until it was red and raw.

But she was perfect. She was beautiful and had her eyes closed when they lay her in my arms. I held her and rocked her and looked at her perfect face, her little nose. When she cried, her mouth yawned wide. I saw it there, on her tongue, under the hospital lights.

Shifting, glittering, spilling out.

NATURAL ENEMY

The two of them look up at the three holes in the white box.

“Do you understand it?”

“I think so.”

“So tell me.”

He sighs. His tongue flicks up to clear the dust from his eye. He looks at the holes again, which sort of look like a face. There’s something metal inside, just out of view. “Do I have to?”

“You don’t have to do anything. You can just stay here, if you want to.” When she turns, her tail slithers behind her on the linoleum. “But you know what happens here.”

He does. Around them, cabinets rise to shiny heights above. Sometimes, the humans push their fingers under the wood and it opens up for them. They take out the poisons inside and spread them on the floor so that they burn your feet when you walk. You have to wait under the stove with the crisped dinner remains and dust bunnies until the floor is dry again.

There are windows too, high above. For a while, he thought maybe he could climb up there, avoiding the sharp chips of paint, and shimmy out through a crack. And then he would be outside in the free air, where he belongs. Buried in good, wet soil. Sleeping in the cool shade of a leaf. Eating juicy locust flesh.

He wonders if her heart ever aches for it like his does.

“I want to try the window first,” he says.

Her mouth opens, showing the wet pink inside. She laughs. “Go, then. You’ll just get yourself stuck. They’ll pluck you out by the tail and then crush your head under a rolling pin.”

She’s right. Their brother went just like that. One moment, he was squirming through a fist of clenched fingers, writhing away, and the next he was splattered all over the counter.

Ever since they had hatched in the bathroom drainpipe, just like their mother had hatched there and her mother before, they were warned about this horrible place. Each generation tried every way they could think of to get out: the window, the scrap bin, the metal slot in the front door. One of them had even slipped into the outer pocket of the little one’s backpack. Maybe she got out for good, but nobody ever heard from her again.

In their many attempts to escape, the humans became more violent with them. At first, they flushed them down the toilet. Then came the poisons, the sticky traps, the burning. Men in yellow suits came and pumped a heavy fog through every room until only the ones who had stowed themselves in the refrigerator drawer with the vegetables survived.

He looks at the three holes in the white box. The pronged snake attached to the toaster oven lies below, where his sister left it when she tugged it free. She promises it will be quick, he’ll hardly feel a thing. All he has to do is touch the metal part inside. Then there will be no more hiding and no more running. It’s like beating them at their own game, she says, because you won’t have to be afraid anymore. But he isn’t sure. Isn’t this what they want? Won’t they just sweep up his body in the dustpan and throw him out with the others?

There used to be many of them, and they used to be hopeful. Excited, even. They were too hopeful and tried all of their ideas too fast, and the humans were fast and angry too. And then there were only the two of them left.

He wonders what it will feel like to be back with the others again, even if he can’t feel anything.

“Are you going to do it?” She asks.

“Yes.” But he doesn’t move. He wants to look at the light coming through the window again. Maybe there’s something he’s forgotten in the drainpipe. Maybe there’s something else they haven’t tried.

“Fine. I’ll go first, then. But you have to go after me.”

She climbs the wall slowly, suctioning each toe down with a worn-out kind of precision. At the mouth of the hole, she stops for a minute. He wants her to look back at him, to tell him one more time that there’s nothing to be afraid of. But her tail just gives one last decisive flick, and she starts to crawl.

Her body flattens as she slips inside. Only her tail and one nearly-translucent leg poke out.

Nothing happens for a moment. Maybe it’s not going to work. Maybe she’ll have to crawl back out and find another way. But then there’s a sound, just a tiny, faint buzzing. Her tail flicks and goes limp.

He expects her to fall back out of the hole, but she doesn’t. She just hangs there, half in and half out.

And he is the only one left.

Caleb Weinhardt (he/him) is a queer and trans fiction writer. He grew up on a farm in the Midwest, but now lives near several Twilight filming locations with his dog, Winnie, and an apartment full of chicken-related decor. His work appears in or is forthcoming in Tales to Terrify, Broken Antler Magazine Quarterly, Blanket Gravity, and others. He also edits FORGE’s Trans Survivors zine. Find him at calebweinhardt.com.