The Hybrid Project

Chapter 5

May's POV

A bed, to me, was a pile of kindling waiting for somebody to strike a match...

I lay on top of the blanket, at the very edge of the mattress, with my back rigid and my eyes open, refusing to close. The whole frame creaked each time I breathed. Every little sound in the dark was Dean, grinning with a lantern. I could smell the straw tick. I could smell smoke that wasn’t there.

And beneath it all - on the pillow, on the sheets, in the very wool of the blanket - I could smell the sharp, clean scent that clung to my brother’s coats.

The clinic!

It seeped out of his skin as though he’d soaked in it. It made my stomach turn over; slowly, like something stirred in a pot.

He slept like a man with a clean conscience. He lay on his back with his hands folded on his chest, and his breath went in and out, slow and even. And the cord rose and fell on my wrist with every one.

It didn’t make the nights any shorter.

Dr. Wren paid for what arrived, and Calvin took very good care of what would be paid for.

That was all I was...

I wasn’t someone he hated, or wanted, or even particularly noticed. I was a crate of eggs he was carrying home across a bad road, and he did not intend to drop it.

Somehow that was worse.

But because of that I knew with every fiber in my body that I had to escape.

Only---

I wasn't Captain Dawn!

On one of the early nights, I thought he was asleep. I eased a finger beneath the cord and began, very gently, to work at the knot.

“You can’t sleep,” Calvin said, into the dark.

I went still!

“That’s all right.” His eyes didn’t open. His voice remained soft and idle, as if he were talking in his sleep. “I like knowing you’re awake.”

I didn't try to untie the knot after that. My body felt cold despite the sweat on my back.

I didn't move.

I could barely breathe...

I lay there until morning with my wrist burning, and I did not move again.

The days were worse in a different way...

I had never, in all my life, had nothing to do.

I’d been up before the sun every morning since I could carry a pail. There had always been another job waiting, and another, and another after that... A chain of them stretching from the moment I woke to the moment I fell down. And I’d never known how much of me was held up by it, until it was gone...

Calvin kept me in the kitchen. He took the key to the back door and wore it around his neck on a bit of string. He told Dean and Harlan to make an excuse for him at the Clinic and then stayed to watch me.

Eve and Eli made a fuss since they had to pick up the slack. Eve insisted that Eli couldn't do everything I'd done and that "a little work was good for me". And Eli complained, his naps and dinners interrupted, and his fingers would blister if he carried all the wood...

But Calvin didn't budge - and John was on his side...

So Eve cooked the breakfast, and she scrubbed her own pots. And I sat on a stool in the corner with my hands in my lap, and watched the clock above the stove. Every tick, tick, tick felt like a noose tightening around my neck...

My hands didn’t know what to do with themselves. I folded a dish towel. I unfolded it. I folded it again, with the corners tucked, the way Eve liked. I smoothed the oilcloth on the table until she told me, in a voice like a slammed lid, "to stop that fidgeting!"

On the other hand, I’d never been fed so well in all my life.

That was the strangest part of it. I was given a proper meal, once a day, every day. And not the scraps and the cold crusts. It was a thick stew with real meat in it, and potatoes soft as butter. There was even a cup of milk beside it.

I’d never hated anything so much.

Because I understood what it was.

It wasn’t a kindness.

They were fattening a calf for market...

By the middle of the week my cheeks had begun to fill. I felt it, a faint softness against my fingertips where there had only been bone.

My wrists looked less like twigs.

Even Eve noticed!

She stopped on her way past the stool and took my chin in her hand, turned my face to the window, and studied it.

“Better,” she said. “Dr. Wren said healthy.”

She let go as if she’d touched something greasy, and wiped her fingers on her apron...

I made plans...

I couldn’t help it. It was the thing I’d always done, in every corner of that house. When you can’t change what’s happening, you learn the shape of it. And you keep learning, until sooner or later you find where it gives...

I knew every stone on that land. I knew where the ground was soft, and where a cow’s tracks would wash out in the first heavy rain.

I’d had a plan!

But every inch of that plan was outdoors.

And I was stuck in the kitchen.

I wondered for a while if I could somehow get Calvin to get me outside. But I'd known that I would have more luck convincing a rock to sprout wings than to fool Calvin.

So I studied the kitchen, because there was nothing else. I knew its every board. The one by the stove that squealed. The loose one by the pantry door. I knew the bolt on the door, and the hinge on the cellar hatch. And the old iron vent in the pantry wall, where one slat of the grating had rusted half through at the base---

That had a light bulb go off above my head!

It was sharp. And I could use it to cut my ropes and finally escape...

I was careful with my planning. I got to that slat one afternoon, while Eve was dozing over her mending and Eli was complaining to Calvin, distracting him.

It took me a long time to ease the nail loose, with my breath held and my ears pricked for the creak of her chair and the waterfall of words spilling from Eli's fat lips. When it finally came free, I closed my fist around it, small and cold, and for the first time in days something in my chest lifted.

I hid it in my sleeve.

Then I sat very still in my corner for the rest of the afternoon, and I didn't look at the vent.

It was my first step to freedom...

But my hope was quickly squashed. The second Calvin closed the door that night, he turned to me and held out his hand, gesturing for me to hand it over.

I didn't!

I just stood there, watching his hand like it was on fire. If I gave up now, then I didn't stand a chance at all. But my defiance only amused my oldest brother.

With lightning speed, he launched for me and grabbed both my hands. I gasped in surprise and tried to step away. But he flipped me over, and before I knew what was happening, my back was pressed against the bed.

And Calvin was on top of me...

Shocked and terrified, I looked up--- and felt sick when I saw his grinning face, looking down at me with that same bright light that never failed to make something cold crawl down my spine.

His chest heaved for a second before he leaned closer. Something hard pressed against my stomach, and I froze in fear. I had no idea what it was, but my body went cold and stiff. His breath fanned my ear, and when he spoke, it didn't feel like words.

They felt dangerous...

"You can hand it over yourself," he said low and hoarse, yet with a smile on his lips. "Or I'll strip you naked and look for it myself!"

I shivered. I gritted my teeth so he couldn't hear them clattering. My whole body screamed for me to run, but all I could do was lie there, still as a rock, and scream for someone to help me.

But even if I had a voice, nobody would come...

Nobody ever listened to me...

Tears pressed against the corner of my eyes, and I wished I could will them away. But they kept coming, and against my will, a still sob shook my body.

Calvin's grin only grew wider...

"Hand it over," he said softly. "And this will all be over."

I didn't want to...

But I wanted him off and away from me more...

I looked up at my hand, where I'd hidden it in my sleeve. His eyes followed my gaze and moments later, he'd pried the nail out of the fabric. Another, more unusual grin curled his lips now, like it did when something happened that he didn't expect...

"You're a clever little thing, aren't you, Mary?"

He said it with a level of affection I'd never heard before. But it left my insides feeling like they'd been replaced with barbed wire.

He rose, and I didn't mean to look, but I noticed that the hard thing that had been pressing against me was now bulging in his pants. He noticed me looking, and it was physically painful to watch that light in his eyes.

"Not yet, Little Mary," he said affectionately.

"Not yet!"