Halfway Inhuman Chapter 2

  

Gray, Natalie. Unidentified nonhuman. The printout said I wasn’t human.

Which was a load of crap!

“No. No. This is a mistake. This isn’t me,” I said.

I audited Royal’s employment records and discovered about 50 employees had started working before the Inequity Act of 2021 passed. So yesterday I ordered a genetic screening for all 50. It was a broad, faceless screening. I happened to be one of those employees. 

 “Martin, this isn’t possible,” I said.

“What are you?” he snarled. 

My heart was a Ducati Superbike about to wheelie out of my chest. If this was real, we wouldn’t have to worry about identifying my species because I’d just die of a heart attack. This was not real.

“I’m human,” I said. “I’m a human. My mom and dad are human. I’m human.”

Three shadows formed at my door.

“Miss Gray, apparently, you’re not,” Gene Fielding said. Fielding was my boss. My first boss. I interned for Royal Insurance my senior year of college, and Fielding hired me the day after I graduated. He was a fatherly sort of guy with graying hair and a penchant for funky neckties.  Today he wore a tie with purple cabbages on it.  

There were two security guards behind Fielding.

“No, Gene, listen. This is a mistake,” I said. “Look.”

I pulled out my cross, panicked that they weren’t going to believe me.

“From the Church of Souls,” I said. “Blessed, iron and silver, Gene.”

I pulled open my desk drawer, grabbed my purse and fumbled in my wallet. I dropped my driver’s license, trying to snag my worship license. I held the photo identification that stated I was baptized, took host at the local Church of Souls, and was a tithing community member.

Church membership cards were as good as a birth certificate. Better, because they established humanity.

“Gene, look, look at this, OK. I’m human. I go to church. I eat salt and garlic,” my voice broke. “Gene, test me again, OK? This is a mistake.”

Shitdamnfuckhell.

 I tend to word-puke when I freak out. This was the most freaked out I’d ever been in my life.

“I mean maybe there’s another Natalie Gray in the building, or maybe they switched my cheek swab or maybe … .”

One of the guards made a “get up” motion.

 “You have five minutes to clear out your personal effects, turn in your badge and get out of my building,” Gene said.

“But I’m human,” I cried.

“Now you have four minutes to get out of my building,” Gene said.

“No!” I yelled. “I’m human! I’m not going anywhere! Gene, you know I’m human.”

“Please remove her,” Gene said. He left. Gene just left. No severance pay. No goodbye party.

Please remove her.

That rat-bastard. He was so going to have to kiss my butt for months when this was cleared up. My tears dried up real quick. I didn’t do well with whining and crying; but I was amazing at being angry.

I opened my desk, grabbed a swab kit and cracked it open.

“Screw that. I’m not going anywhere until we get a retest,” I said.

“Gray, you can walk in front of us, or we can see how fast you heal from steel,” one of the guards said.

The security officers approached me, weapons drawn.

Martin just stood there watching.

They honestly thought I wasn’t human, and they would shoot me.

My anger boiled out and fear steamed in its place. Fear was interesting.

The hair on my arms stood straight up, and ice-cold cold sweat dripped down my gel-enhanced cleavage. I swallowed hard because the coffee I drank was burbling in the back of my throat. My legs felt watery.  

The security guys flanked out to either side of me and told me to move. I moved.

I stumbled out the door into the hall. Tears clouded my vision and my fingertips were cold. I could feel the guard behind me. I could feel his gun.

 “I want to be retested,” I said.

“I don’t give a shit what you want,” the guard said. “I want you out.”

The hallway I’d shared gossip in was filled with wide-eyed coworkers, whispering as I was herded to the door. The hallway seemed longer than it was, as if I were walking death row, rather than the 20 feet to the door.

The receptionist, Judy, was a good friend of mine. She wouldn’t make eye contact as I passed her desk.

I paused and looked at the poster over her desk. It was the Inequity Act of 2021, next to the sign “Humans only need apply.”

“I commissioned those,” I said.

The guards were silent. I looked around, pleading with my eyes for someone to stand up and affirm my humanity. Nobody did.

It was the most humiliating moment of my life.

So I left.

I pushed open the glass doors, and walked away from the most stable thing I had going for me.

 As I left the climate-controlled building, the Florida heat swooped down on me and caused bigger goose-bumps to form on my arms. I could smell the Atlantic Ocean in the air, briny and hot, the smell of summer. I swore, for a second, I could almost smell suntan oil. It was the golden hour, right before the sun set, and I was sure girls were lined up on the beach in droves to get the perfect Instagram picture.

The sky was flawless, blue with not a cloud in sight.

Trust me to have my life screwed up on the most glorious day of the year.

I didn’t realize I had stopped right outside the door. The security guard realized that. He pushed the door open and yelled at me.

 “Get in your car and leave.” 

I crossed the blacktop in a stupor. They thought I wasn’t human and they legally fired me with no notice and no option to appeal. 

I opened the door to my blue Chevy Cobalt and rested my head against its hot roof for a moment.

The guards went back inside.

Martin did not. He followed me and leaned against the driver’s side quarter panel, so that my open door shielded him from me.

“I trusted you,” he said. His jaw was clenched, his shoulders were back. “I expected that you trusted me.”

I didn’t raise my head. It was summer, and in Daytona Beach, the inside of my car was about the temperature of a thousand dying suns. When I opened the door, the super-heated air rushed out around me like a convection oven. I didn’t really feel it.

“I’m human, Martin,” I said.

Martin must not have heard me, because he continued, “You must have had a good laugh whenever I was worried about you. I mean, I offered to let you stay with me, so I could protect you.”

He barked out a bitter laugh.

“Joke’s on me, huh? I mean, what would you be afraid of? Your kind can probably bench-press me.”

I backed up and slammed the door. I’d been humiliated and I’d acted like a weenie, but damn it, enough was enough.

“Listen, jackass, I don’t know who you think you are, but I know who I am. People are my kind. You know it, Detective Martin,” I said.

He took a step back and instinctually put his hand on his firearm. Un-be-fucking-lievable.

My bit of bravado was all I had left. I sagged against the closed door. “You know it,” I whispered.

“What are you, Gray?”

I closed my eyes and leaned my head back.

“Until three minutes ago, I was human,” I said.

“You’re saying you really don’t know what you are?”

That irritated me. I religiously checked out this man’s ass and he couldn’t be bothered to listen to my vehement and semi-hysterical denials for the past few minutes?

Hell. No.

“Check my parents, Martin. Dad’s a union electrician. He’s human. Mom’s a freelance writer. She’s human. I’ve never been bitten or scratched by anything. I wear blessed icons, go to church, and I take host,” I said. “Check me out. I’m not a monster.”

I slid down the car until my bottom was on my feet.

“Oh, God of Souls, please don’t let me be a monster,” I cried.

He moved away from the car.

“Go home. Maybe you should get retested. I mean, how accurate are those things?” he asked.

“Ninety-nine point nine-nine. We’ve never had a mistake,” I said.

“So you’re not human?” he asked.

“I have to be,” I said. Then I whispered, “I have to be.”

I shifted so my butt was on the blacktop and my feet were out in front of me.

“What’s with the unclassified crap? I’ve never seen that,” he said.

“Most insurable monsters fall into four main categories: Undead, shapeshifter, fae and other. There are subcategories for each, tons of subcategories,” I said. He looked interested so I kept on going. Shop-talk made me feel more in control. “So a werewolf or skinwalker would fall under shape-shifter. A vampire or zombie would be undead. A leprechaun, elf or pixie would be fae, and so on. The more humanlike the monster, the more likely it is to work in society and have a DNA profile available.”

“So what’s with the unclassified?”

“It means it’s something that hasn’t been documented. It’s definitely not human, but it’s not one of the Big Four,” I said.

There were a lot of undocumented species in the world. But who needed to insure a lake monster, or an ogre? Those types of classifications, things which were worthless to our business, didn’t make it into our database. They were unclassified.

I stood up and opened my door again. The implications were pretty ugly.

“Which means I’m either something new, or something so alien from human it hasn’t spent thousands of years infiltrating our society,” I said.

Oh, God of Souls, it could be true.

I got in the car, and pulled the seatbelt across my chest. The buckle was like a branding iron, so I tried to click it without actually touching any metal. Easier said than done.

“You really didn’t know did you?” Martin asked. He hadn’t moved an inch from where he perched. If I started the car and backed up, he’d fall right on his nice ass. That thought made me feel a little better about the universe.

“Really, Martin? Seriously.” I said. I shook my head and fumbled in my oversized purse for my sunglasses. 

“It doesn’t matter, Nat,” he said.

My heart softened a little. Even if I was a monster, he accepted me. I looked up and met his eyes.

“Thank you, Martin,” I whispered.

It was good to have friends who would stick by you no matter what.

It was better to have hot friends who would stick by you. 

Maybe I should suggest an underpants moment.

“No, I mean, it doesn’t matter that you didn’t know,” Martin said. “If you ever harm a single hair on a human, I’ll personally execute you.”

He spun on his heel and left.

I picked my jaw up off the ground, closed the door and turned on the car.

I looked at myself in the rearview mirror as I put the car in gear.

“That’s a pisser!” I said, as I backed out.

The only good thing about the day so far was that it absolutely could not get any shittier.

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