Алия Уайтли: The Beauty

The cooking duties have fallen to Adam and Paul, to keep them out of mischief during their own swellings. Alas, their cooking is terrible! They take the dried ingredients we have left and serve up lumpy stews and leaky grey omelettes, which Thomas eats with gusto. He’s the only one.

It can’t be past two in the afternoon, but already it’s getting difficult to discern any edges to the room. Is Thomas asleep again? He doesn’t move as I stand and stretch out my legs. Uncle Ted is out. I don’t ask where he goes. The others are doing chores, or at least watching their Beauties do the chores for them. All of the manual tasks have been taken away now and our muscles are dissipating, leaving us with weakening arms. We have become reliant.

‘Want to hold her?’ says Thomas. So he is awake after all, looking at me with the hope of kindness in his eyes. It occurs to me that his new role might not give him everything he needs. There is loneliness, fear and even guilt in such heavy responsibilities. And he is the first to feel these things. Thomas never did like to go first, even in the classroom.

I walk over to him. Bee does not bother to follow. It has stopped sharing with me lately and does not show me visions. Or maybe I stopped sharing with it. I don’t know which. All I’m sure of is that I often find myself checking my hip for signs of a lump and feel such relief when there is nothing to be found.

‘All right then,’ I say. The smell is awful, like curdled milk. He throws back the top blanket and Holly is there, crinkled yellow skin, sticky brown hair in clumps and a face like a painting, not quite human, yet too human to be real.

Thomas holds out his arms. The image of Betty taking off Doctor Ben’s head comes into my mind. I say, ‘No, I’ll just watch her.’

‘Okay.’ Is it my imagination or does he seem relieved at that? He wets his lips with his tongue, and says, ‘I don’t really like to let her go, and Betty can feel it.’

‘Of course.’

‘But if you wanted to hold her, then I’m sure–’

‘No. It’s fine.’

He looks around the empty room. ‘Everything has changed, hasn’t it? I wouldn’t say this in front of the others, but it’s not what you promised.’

‘Later,’ I say. ‘It all comes good later. When has there ever been a bumper crop without a harsh winter? Maybe we don’t get the benefit of this harvest, but Holly does. I didn’t understand before.’ I still don’t understand now, but he needs something to imagine, and I’ll give him a long straight road in his head that leads to better times. I don’t have to believe it to make him see it; I’ve learned that now.

I talk and talk about Holly’s life-in-waiting, and he laps it up. It’ll be like before, I tell him. She will be the mother of new women, and humans and Beauty will live in harmony. The Beauty will be our benevolent guardians, stopping us from listening to the worst things in our hearts, making everything perfect this time around. Maybe there will be cities again, but with no crime, no pain; harmony in form and intent. And what will it matter if some of us are pink-skinned, and some of us are brown and some of us are yellow? We’ll overcome such unimportant matters.

I could go on forever, spinning this new world of tall towers and hand-holding, but Holly is opening and closing her mouth, wriggling in her blanket. No sound comes out, but I feel her hunger. She transmits it. I’ve never felt something so clearly from a Beauty, even from Bee. It’s intense and painful. Unwelcome.

‘She’s hungry.’ Thomas hesitates, his body curved over her.

‘You want me to get some milk from the kitchen?’ I ask him.

‘Listen, I’ve not been giving her milk.’ He swallows. ‘Please don’t freak out if I show you this.’ He takes off more blankets and reveals his familiar fat pale body; I’ve seen it many times. I expected a long red scar where Holly pushed her way through – but the skin looks clean and whole, apart from one puckered red mole on his hip.

He manoeuvres Holly to the mole. Her mouth puckers. The mole expands in response to her need. It opens, uncurling, the edges pulling backwards, and inside is a moist purplish hole that begins to weep a white liquid. Holly’s head cranes forward – I didn’t know she had such strength already – and she latches on, her lips fitting around the folds. Thomas shudders and his eyelids flutter.

‘It feels good,’ he whispers.

To watch this makes me feel wrong inside, like nothing has before, even death. That blind expression of pleasure on both their faces, and the sucking sound; I am repulsed and excited. It sickens me and attracts me and my body responds to the idea of it, even as my mind tells me it is horrible, horrible.

I don’t move. I watch Thomas feed his baby.

He opens his eyes and says softly, as she feeds, ‘Are you disgusted? I am, sometimes. Do you know what’s even worse? Betty uses this new hole too. When we… Betty has a long thin yellow tube that comes out of it. Between its legs. And it puts that in there. It feels like nothing I’ve ever felt before. So good. I couldn’t stop it. I don’t want to. It’s like when I come with my cock, but ten times stronger. And longer. It lasts for minutes.’

‘Don’t tell the others,’ I say.

‘Not even Adam and Paul?’ he asks.

‘No. Let them come to it on their own. Like you did.’

‘Yes, maybe that’ll be better.’

If the other side found out, William and Eamon and the others, they’d find a way to kill Thomas and Holly, for sure. And the teenagers. They’d find a way, or they’d die trying.

‘I guess it’s a good thing I’m not using my cock for it anymore,’ Thomas says, with a shrug that makes the baby grumble against his hip. ‘Look.’ He flips back the final blanket. At first I see only a hairless flap of skin, like the medical books said a woman should have, but then I see the stub of his cock, no more than a nub. There are no balls in the remains of the pouch beneath. ‘I use it to piss with and that’s it. No feeling in it.’

‘None?’ I ask.

‘Just enough to tell me where I’m aiming.’ He smiles, but I can’t make my face mirror his. ‘It doesn’t hurt,’ he says. ‘None of it does, now. Having Holly; that was the worst pain I’ve ever felt. Maybe that’s why all of this seems so petty now. Who cares where the milk comes out of? She has to be fed. Doesn’t she?’

‘Don’t tell anyone,’ I say. ‘Not anyone. For Holly’s sake.’

‘I won’t. Besides, Betty will protect me. And all the babies, when they come. I wonder if you’ll have a baby. I didn’t think – it makes you complete, Nate. In a way I can’t explain.’

Holly keeps feeding. Thomas pulls the blankets back around them both and I am glad not to have to look at his changing body any more. He is like a fattening caterpillar. I can’t bear to think of what is happening inside him to make him a producer of babies, of milk. And yet he remains Thomas. I don’t understand how he can be Thomas and a mother and a caterpillar, all at the same time.

Behind us, there is a sound.

I turn around smartly and see Bee moving to the door. It leaves without waiting for me, without hesitation. Betty remains still, beside Thomas.

‘What?’ he says.

‘I don’t know. Stay here.’

By the time I’ve reached the front door I can hear the shouting. William’s voice is as loud as I’ve ever heard it; I scramble to the campfire, shoeless, feeling the bite of the icy ground under my feet. William’s strident voice becomes distinguishable words. He says, ‘…must be done. Stay back, we’re making the rules…’

…and I see the men who wait outside William’s house. On the ground there are two beheaded bodies of the Beauty, leaking yellow-grey liquid from the stumps of their necks. The other Beauties have formed a line, Bee in the centre, walking slowly towards the house.