The Wall Between Us
To be announced. But there's probably a wall. And it's possibly between two people.
Genre: Romantic Western/Science Fiction
Word Count: N/A
Status: In the Works
Sequels: N/A
Genre: Romantic Western/Science Fiction
Word Count: N/A
Status: In the Works
Sequels: N/A
Excerpt:
1
At 1,200 feet, you could almost see past the wall.
Open doors wafted in air from the balcony and the perfumed scent of the young women looking out over the city. I didn’t step outside. I’d seen what they look at before. Nothing was above the white line of concrete but dark clouds like smoke from a volcano. The buildings below reflected desert sunlight like blades and gave me a headache.
“Think. Please.”
I looked over to the fertilitist behind the desk – what we called sorority employees in charge of procreation. She watched me as if tears would well in her eyes and slip into the wrinkles of her face.
I had thought. I had nothing more to think.
“There must be something, Mackie.” She leans in and drops her voice to a whisper. “Special accomplishments, an exceptional reference. Anything to exempt you.”
There was.
“There’s not,” I said.
The fertilitist dropped her head and pursed her lips at the legal document before her. “Perhaps if you were to say…”
“There is nothing to exempt me.” I lied because I could.
When the woman sighed, it was almost frustrated. Like banging a gavel, she smacked the paper with a red stamp.
I watched her sign the document. The sound of the scratching pen was like a fly in my ear, but my expression did not twitch. I didn’t feel apprehensive. I didn’t even feel fear.
She lifted the paper and I stood to take it.
I would bear my first and only child this year.
The paper in my hand now proved it. I was not exempt.
***
The pages were laminated and bound in a spiral binder. They’d been handled many times – some had black stickers over them to cover the former applicant. I didn’t look up from reading the profiles as my mother squeezed my knee beneath the plastic picnic table.
“It’s perfectly normal to feel a little nervous.” The woman before us crossed her hands on the table and spoke to my mother. She must have seen that I wasn’t not going to comment. Or look up. But I kept her in the corner of my eye – she wore a badge on her black work suit that says Jessica Dunlevy, Case Manager. Pronounced collarbones stretched her blotchy skin and her hair was straight and tangerine.
“That’s why we’re going to be right here. Every step of the way.”
Men had such strange names. They seemed to end abruptly, no matter how many syllables.
I sensed my mother and Jessica staring at me.
“Does that sound okay, Ms. Tayloress?”
My last name was Taylor. The feminine accent sewn to the end was meant to be respectful, so I took no disrespect. That would be excessively contradictory.
“That’s fine.”
I still didn’t lift my head from the heavy roster in my lap. Chills ran through me as afternoon sun slipped behind the towering wall to our left and shadow tripped over us. Jessica and my mother shared an endeared, sheepish purse of their lips as if to say Poor thing.
Jessica rose and reached to give my shoulder an encouraging shake. I bobbled.
“Take your time choosing. If you’re unsure, ask, kiddo. That’s why we’re here.”
The case manager left to check in on the other young women and their mothers sitting on identical picnic benches. Many black-suited women like her circulated and smiled warmly and patiently at every question asked by pale and shaky-toned girls my age. Mothers snaked their arms around their daughters’ shoulders. Instantly as I think it, my mother did the same.
She was taller than any woman on this entire side of the wall. She had a long face and blonde hair. Her smile wrinkles made her beautiful. Her rectangle glasses made her mine. We didn’t talk much. I’m not a words person. But I loved her. I always wanted her to know that.
I was used to her speaking far more. On my first day of school, she knelt on the verandah of our house and fixed the bow in my hair and her words spilled out like a nervous slopping of water from a pitcher. She told me a story about a brave locomotive or some extreme use of personification that I didn’t need, but I had spent the time blocking out the parable and instead studying all the little things about her expressions and loving gestures that I was fascinated by. I never could match her ability to show affection.
I waited for her words. I waited for the fables and metaphors.
My mother did not look at me. She breathed in. Her voice was barely a whisper.
“Pick someone special.”
And she left me. A vacuum of air swept away with her. I suddenly felt stripped bare.
The index of applicant seemed heavier in my lap. My lower legs felt cool. I shifted the binder and allowed blood to rush down.
My eyes returned to the profiles.
Highlighted were gene analysis, family history, age, height and weight of the male. The numbers on those last two were high. Habits and personal comments were noted at the bottom but left unboldened, not underlined, just a few sparse sentences. Some were blank.
A photo accompanied every profile. I studied them the way tongues study a blemish in the mouth; unable to stop feeling and prodding and wondering. Men have short hair. Their faces are rougher, particularly around the jaw. There is something different in their eyes.
They don’t scare me, either, though. I looked up at the sound of a cry and saw another nineteen year old break into tears and shove the index away into the hands of a worried and placating case manager like Jessica. I might not find too many like minds around here.
I flashed the photos of men like a film real and tried to determine what it was that I kept seeing in all of them. I flipped through them twice more. And finally realized it was their eyes I always looked at, so it must be in there. I saw…weariness. And something else. Something uneasy. Something on edge. I heard my mother say once that they missed us.
It didn’t matter who I chose. Any of them would do.
I flipped through them once more.
My thumb wedged between the rubbery pages and halted my flipping.
There. I saw it. Something apart from the other profiles.
I looked at every photo intently, but I looked at this one harder. The young man had brown hair and dark green eyes. The combination reminded me of trees. Like the others, he had a controlled, taught posture before the camera, and I glanced at the three long, parallel red scars trailing from his shirt sleeve to his wrist, down a forearm that looked firmer and fuzzier than the slim and smooth female arms I’d had brush by me in the school hallways, clutching textbooks. But as before, what stopped me was in his eyes.
He had what the others had. Weariness. Edginess. Alertness. But something else. Something I felt like he’d tried to hide.
Hope.
I stiffened, because at last something scared me.
I wanted to collide with him and feel what he was feeling. I wanted to crash into him for a moment, long enough to think That’s what it was and then leave to be as I am.
I gave myself a second. I looked over his profile.
Daniel Shepherd. I said it aloud under my breath.
What a strange name.
So why did I say it again?
I kept my thumb on his page, stood, and raised my hand.
***
“Oh, damn, that’s blood.”
Rider laughed as it dripped onto his fingers.
“WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU!”
“Hold still!”
Daniel writhed in the chair. His teeth crackled against the wooden peg stuffed in his mouth. Rider blanched with laughter and reeled around, walking to the door that led into the musky hall.
“That’s a lot of fucking blood,” he chuckled.
“GET IT OUT!”
“Shut up, Shep, I’m getting the hammer again.”
“YOU DIDN’T ‘ET IT THE ‘IRST TIME!”
“Shut up.”
Daniel closed his eyes and drool slithered down his chin. He huffed over the wood.
Rider’s heavy step returned to creak over the wooden planks. He reached a tattooed hand up and batted the hanging lightbulb. It swung around the light and shadows.
“Kay, let’s try again…”
He leaned over Daniel and positioned the hammer.
“ON’T. ‘ISS.”
“No, no,” Rider assured. “That little bastard’s coming out.” He closed one eye and his tongue poked out over his lip ring. Daniel’s hands clenched the arms of the chair.
“One…”
“Oh, God…”
“Two…”
“Wait.”
“THREE!”
Whack!
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
“Shhh! Shhh! Shep! Shepshepshepshep, look!”
Rider held up the broken tooth and blood seeped down his wrist like vines.
Daniel’s head lay back on the chair and his mouth hung open like a nightmarish well.
“Go. Away.”
Rider snickered. “Can I keep this?”
Daniel heaved himself forward and off the chair. He spit into the corner. “That’s my hammer. And blood is not a good look for you.” He jerked the hammer out of Rider’s grasp.
“Daniel!”
Daniel and Rider froze. The voice was high-pitched and from the hallway. And then –
Daniel threw the hammer to the ground. “Get my bullets!” He lunged for the cabinet in the wall. He jangled the keys at his belt as Rider shuffled madly in a wooden ammunition box for the right caliber.
“Daniel Shepherd!” the voice came again, closer to the door.
“Hurry!” said Daniel. He lifts the long, black sniper rifle off its hinges and spins for the door.
A balding man is there with a single crutch clasping up his forearm. His olive skin is polished in sweat and thick, black-rimmed glasses magnify his eyes. He looks like he belongs in an art museum sooner than a rundown old shack.
“Daniel,” the man says a third time, breathless. Daniel lowers the sniper rifle in both hands and sighs. He shares a relieved glance with Rider. There is no emergency. Yet.
“You’ve been called for insemination.”
Daniel snapped back to the man. Rider recoiled as if a flame burst right in front of him.
Daniel’s expression froze. His eyes locked there in disbelief.
The man, as if understanding the shock, nodded.
“Someone chose you.”
1
At 1,200 feet, you could almost see past the wall.
Open doors wafted in air from the balcony and the perfumed scent of the young women looking out over the city. I didn’t step outside. I’d seen what they look at before. Nothing was above the white line of concrete but dark clouds like smoke from a volcano. The buildings below reflected desert sunlight like blades and gave me a headache.
“Think. Please.”
I looked over to the fertilitist behind the desk – what we called sorority employees in charge of procreation. She watched me as if tears would well in her eyes and slip into the wrinkles of her face.
I had thought. I had nothing more to think.
“There must be something, Mackie.” She leans in and drops her voice to a whisper. “Special accomplishments, an exceptional reference. Anything to exempt you.”
There was.
“There’s not,” I said.
The fertilitist dropped her head and pursed her lips at the legal document before her. “Perhaps if you were to say…”
“There is nothing to exempt me.” I lied because I could.
When the woman sighed, it was almost frustrated. Like banging a gavel, she smacked the paper with a red stamp.
I watched her sign the document. The sound of the scratching pen was like a fly in my ear, but my expression did not twitch. I didn’t feel apprehensive. I didn’t even feel fear.
She lifted the paper and I stood to take it.
I would bear my first and only child this year.
The paper in my hand now proved it. I was not exempt.
***
The pages were laminated and bound in a spiral binder. They’d been handled many times – some had black stickers over them to cover the former applicant. I didn’t look up from reading the profiles as my mother squeezed my knee beneath the plastic picnic table.
“It’s perfectly normal to feel a little nervous.” The woman before us crossed her hands on the table and spoke to my mother. She must have seen that I wasn’t not going to comment. Or look up. But I kept her in the corner of my eye – she wore a badge on her black work suit that says Jessica Dunlevy, Case Manager. Pronounced collarbones stretched her blotchy skin and her hair was straight and tangerine.
“That’s why we’re going to be right here. Every step of the way.”
Men had such strange names. They seemed to end abruptly, no matter how many syllables.
I sensed my mother and Jessica staring at me.
“Does that sound okay, Ms. Tayloress?”
My last name was Taylor. The feminine accent sewn to the end was meant to be respectful, so I took no disrespect. That would be excessively contradictory.
“That’s fine.”
I still didn’t lift my head from the heavy roster in my lap. Chills ran through me as afternoon sun slipped behind the towering wall to our left and shadow tripped over us. Jessica and my mother shared an endeared, sheepish purse of their lips as if to say Poor thing.
Jessica rose and reached to give my shoulder an encouraging shake. I bobbled.
“Take your time choosing. If you’re unsure, ask, kiddo. That’s why we’re here.”
The case manager left to check in on the other young women and their mothers sitting on identical picnic benches. Many black-suited women like her circulated and smiled warmly and patiently at every question asked by pale and shaky-toned girls my age. Mothers snaked their arms around their daughters’ shoulders. Instantly as I think it, my mother did the same.
She was taller than any woman on this entire side of the wall. She had a long face and blonde hair. Her smile wrinkles made her beautiful. Her rectangle glasses made her mine. We didn’t talk much. I’m not a words person. But I loved her. I always wanted her to know that.
I was used to her speaking far more. On my first day of school, she knelt on the verandah of our house and fixed the bow in my hair and her words spilled out like a nervous slopping of water from a pitcher. She told me a story about a brave locomotive or some extreme use of personification that I didn’t need, but I had spent the time blocking out the parable and instead studying all the little things about her expressions and loving gestures that I was fascinated by. I never could match her ability to show affection.
I waited for her words. I waited for the fables and metaphors.
My mother did not look at me. She breathed in. Her voice was barely a whisper.
“Pick someone special.”
And she left me. A vacuum of air swept away with her. I suddenly felt stripped bare.
The index of applicant seemed heavier in my lap. My lower legs felt cool. I shifted the binder and allowed blood to rush down.
My eyes returned to the profiles.
Highlighted were gene analysis, family history, age, height and weight of the male. The numbers on those last two were high. Habits and personal comments were noted at the bottom but left unboldened, not underlined, just a few sparse sentences. Some were blank.
A photo accompanied every profile. I studied them the way tongues study a blemish in the mouth; unable to stop feeling and prodding and wondering. Men have short hair. Their faces are rougher, particularly around the jaw. There is something different in their eyes.
They don’t scare me, either, though. I looked up at the sound of a cry and saw another nineteen year old break into tears and shove the index away into the hands of a worried and placating case manager like Jessica. I might not find too many like minds around here.
I flashed the photos of men like a film real and tried to determine what it was that I kept seeing in all of them. I flipped through them twice more. And finally realized it was their eyes I always looked at, so it must be in there. I saw…weariness. And something else. Something uneasy. Something on edge. I heard my mother say once that they missed us.
It didn’t matter who I chose. Any of them would do.
I flipped through them once more.
My thumb wedged between the rubbery pages and halted my flipping.
There. I saw it. Something apart from the other profiles.
I looked at every photo intently, but I looked at this one harder. The young man had brown hair and dark green eyes. The combination reminded me of trees. Like the others, he had a controlled, taught posture before the camera, and I glanced at the three long, parallel red scars trailing from his shirt sleeve to his wrist, down a forearm that looked firmer and fuzzier than the slim and smooth female arms I’d had brush by me in the school hallways, clutching textbooks. But as before, what stopped me was in his eyes.
He had what the others had. Weariness. Edginess. Alertness. But something else. Something I felt like he’d tried to hide.
Hope.
I stiffened, because at last something scared me.
I wanted to collide with him and feel what he was feeling. I wanted to crash into him for a moment, long enough to think That’s what it was and then leave to be as I am.
I gave myself a second. I looked over his profile.
Daniel Shepherd. I said it aloud under my breath.
What a strange name.
So why did I say it again?
I kept my thumb on his page, stood, and raised my hand.
***
“Oh, damn, that’s blood.”
Rider laughed as it dripped onto his fingers.
“WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU!”
“Hold still!”
Daniel writhed in the chair. His teeth crackled against the wooden peg stuffed in his mouth. Rider blanched with laughter and reeled around, walking to the door that led into the musky hall.
“That’s a lot of fucking blood,” he chuckled.
“GET IT OUT!”
“Shut up, Shep, I’m getting the hammer again.”
“YOU DIDN’T ‘ET IT THE ‘IRST TIME!”
“Shut up.”
Daniel closed his eyes and drool slithered down his chin. He huffed over the wood.
Rider’s heavy step returned to creak over the wooden planks. He reached a tattooed hand up and batted the hanging lightbulb. It swung around the light and shadows.
“Kay, let’s try again…”
He leaned over Daniel and positioned the hammer.
“ON’T. ‘ISS.”
“No, no,” Rider assured. “That little bastard’s coming out.” He closed one eye and his tongue poked out over his lip ring. Daniel’s hands clenched the arms of the chair.
“One…”
“Oh, God…”
“Two…”
“Wait.”
“THREE!”
Whack!
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!”
“Shhh! Shhh! Shep! Shepshepshepshep, look!”
Rider held up the broken tooth and blood seeped down his wrist like vines.
Daniel’s head lay back on the chair and his mouth hung open like a nightmarish well.
“Go. Away.”
Rider snickered. “Can I keep this?”
Daniel heaved himself forward and off the chair. He spit into the corner. “That’s my hammer. And blood is not a good look for you.” He jerked the hammer out of Rider’s grasp.
“Daniel!”
Daniel and Rider froze. The voice was high-pitched and from the hallway. And then –
Daniel threw the hammer to the ground. “Get my bullets!” He lunged for the cabinet in the wall. He jangled the keys at his belt as Rider shuffled madly in a wooden ammunition box for the right caliber.
“Daniel Shepherd!” the voice came again, closer to the door.
“Hurry!” said Daniel. He lifts the long, black sniper rifle off its hinges and spins for the door.
A balding man is there with a single crutch clasping up his forearm. His olive skin is polished in sweat and thick, black-rimmed glasses magnify his eyes. He looks like he belongs in an art museum sooner than a rundown old shack.
“Daniel,” the man says a third time, breathless. Daniel lowers the sniper rifle in both hands and sighs. He shares a relieved glance with Rider. There is no emergency. Yet.
“You’ve been called for insemination.”
Daniel snapped back to the man. Rider recoiled as if a flame burst right in front of him.
Daniel’s expression froze. His eyes locked there in disbelief.
The man, as if understanding the shock, nodded.
“Someone chose you.”
