I’ve been thinking about my father a lot recently. It’s weird, I haven’t thought about him in years.
My father was old fashioned. He was a man who knew what it was to be a man and how to raise a son who was also a man. He bought me pornography when I was ten and told me I’d know when it was time to use it, but that I was to never tell my mother.
When I scuffed my knee and cried, he spanked me because obviously I needed something to actually cry about.
He once made me rip up dead grass from around the house with my bare hands, wouldn’t give me scissors or gloves. Now, I don’t know if you know this, but not all grass turns into limp little pieces of paper-ish stuff when it dies and dries. Some of it turns into things like reeds and rope and mini fucking razer blades.
The grass sliced into my little finger, in the crease of my finger. I didn’t cry. I didn’t bleed on the floor. But it wouldn’t stop bleeding. It was down the side of my hand and dripping onto the ground.
All I did was ask for a bandage. Not even a doctor, a bandage.
I was told bandages were for sissies and fags.
My father believed in heteronormative values. I shoveled the driveway, my sister had to learn to cook. She stopped being beaten when she was nine because my mother decided that it was inappropriate for a father to yank down the pants of his daughter. That it might give her the wrong idea.
What about everything else that was going on?
My father pushed me constantly, insisting that he was turning me into a great man. He made me copy passages from books to make my handwriting better, legible. Then he made me keep a detailed journal so that he could sit me down at the end of each week and tell me what did and did not actually happen.
I started keeping a second journal, hiding it from him.
When I realized I was gay, I didn’t tell my father. Guess why.
My high school boyfriend told his father. His father was backwoods trash, beat him so bad he almost died. Woke up in a puddle of his own blood in the middle of the night, after the old man had drunk himself into unconciousness. He was locked in his room from the outside. Had to break the window to crawl out and ran to my place.
Where my father called his father.
He got away but… but…
It’s the new century, we still live in fear.
Joey may have been a magical princess, his family was rich and he was the second born son and mommy and daddy were just oh so supportive but growing up, that’s not what happened. Not for our…. I can’t even say generation, the decade that we were born in? That was not the norm.
I was unhappy with my childhood, but what my father did to me did make me a better man. I didn’t see him until shortly before his death, and I never told him I was gay, much to Joey’s disgust, but I was there for his death. It hit me hard.
It didn’t hit my sister.
I’m pretty certain after the burial, she went back and danced on her grave. Not that I blame her, but I think she did. Either that or piss on it. I just know she came back very ruffled and quite wasted. I put her to bed and lied to my mother about what had happened.
Why am I thinking of my father?
Today was a normal day, maybe that’s why. Nothing really distracted me.
Craig isn’t eating still. He drank a little water today, but he spends his days sitting on the bed, staring at the door. Just waiting.
Todd spent his twenty minutes with the therapist. I could see the energy just drain from him. He really wasn’t happy about it. And she just sat there. Last couple of minutes, just like he said…
“And how do you think that makes me feel?”
“I am not here for your entertainment,” Todd said.
But his voice quivered.
Oh, and she started chastising him about it. So I kicked the bitch out. Todd watched it happen, then just gave me his wet cat look. Once she was gone, I sent Tim on a break. John won’t be back until Friday.
“What she said isn’t true at all,” I said. “That’s why I kicked her out. You want to speak up about something, you do it. I’m not going to hit you for it, might argue with you, but not hit you. Or zap or any other discipline.”
“You’re weird.”
And he went back to work.
We took a B-type out for medical. When you take someone out for testing or medical or anything, they get four guards. Two ahead, two behind. There are guards posted in the hallway every fifty feet.
In medical there are no guards posted.
One Other out at a time, because Off-ers.
During the rather boring procedure, I started loading files. Looking into things. I had been hoping to find a pattern in the Off-ers. Fourteen in, no, fifteen. Shit. Fifteen in fourteen months, that sounded like there should be something to it. Nothing. At all.
As they were taking the Other back to the room, I approached Tim.
“Tim, I need you to do something for me that I know you won’t want to do,” I said.
“I don’t have an option, if you tell me to do it,” Tim said. “What do you want?”
“I want Todd’s personal file, only for the last fourteen months.”
“Personal or personnel?” Tim asked. “One is his private journal, the other is his file for the company.”
“Todd keeps a journal?” I asked.
“A personal file exists, so he must,” Tim said.
“I want a list of anyone who has accessed that, and I want the personnel file, not the journal.”
So, over tea, not wine, I’m reading his file.
Fourteen months ago, Todd was broken. Then Off-ers began appearing. First thought is that an E-type can keep Others from going Off. That’s a concern. It means we probably caused this.
If Todd can keep them from going Off? Damn…
Of course, that was also the decline. Excluding Euclades, who was old as could be, the ages varied, but none were over fifty. Varying things, such on and so forth. But each of those who went off, except Euclades, had been pushed and hurt by the old Supervisor.
They were hurt a lot. I brought up some of the videos.
Three rapes. With objects… of the only three females to go Off.
Oh God… do I want to know what he was doing to the males?
Twelve months ago the Comfort Protocols went into place. The old Supervisor was still in control and the first day someone went Off. He tried to argue that the comfort protocols caused it. The company had a private conversation with Todd and kept them going.
Don’t know what he said, none of my business.
Six months ago the old Supervisor took a spoon to his eyes. Flipping through everything, there’s been a steady improvement since the Comfort Protocols were brought in.
Six months ago the old Supervisor took a spoon to his eyes.
And the Others have all been improving. There have been fewer incidents, besides the Off-ers which they still blame on the old Supervisor.
And six months ago…
And now Todd… might have Claimed me.
I just, I feel like that’s all connected.
Todd was with that supervisor for his entire time with the company, but it was six months after Comfort Protocols came in that Todd managed to draw up the gumption to make a man take a spoon to his eyes. Not to just scoop them out either, but to scrape into them and just keep scraping until he hit the back of his eye socket, at which point he scraped words into his skin and then drove the spoons into his eye sockets, but somehow not far enough to kill him, just enough to leave him paralyzed.
That’s how you know it’s Other mojo and not something else.
Couldn’t sleep, so I pulled up Craig’s feed.
Humans, Other, doesn’t matter. They eat. You know you have to eat to keep going. Even if you’re stuck in a room, you eat because you have to survive. What’s he up to? What’s he doing?
Nothing his parents said had pointed to anything like that.
He’s waiting me out.
I’m not supposed to make contact until they eat. It’s kind of like a game of chicken, proving that you own them. If they don’t eat, there’s a protocol in place. Archimedes ate right away. Euclades refused for a week. Why’d they starve the poor bastard that long? They killed his wife, he was pissed.
Caesar ate right away, Brutus didn’t, but oddly they were named opposite for what they should have been. Caesar and Brutus were a gay couple who had a fight, they knew they were Other. Brutus called it off because Caesar was reaching like… well… his namesake, and in return Caesar turned them both in to the government.
Which only leaves Daedalus. Waited three days, then ate as he watched the camera. D-Types are fun. Besides the mimicry and such, Daedalus was more willing to play along because he wanted to know about things. He taught others how to do what he did, and then killed himself and an entire facility using what he learned.
Boom.
I have mad respect for him. Not because he killed a bunch of people, but he was smart as could be. I wish his end had been different.
Brutus’ was worse. Poor bastard died under a guard.
The company has done some godawful things to the Others. They’ve started to come around, to change their ways, but their history is terrifying.
Craig will be the first Other taken under the Comfort Protocols. I can’t help but pray to a God I don’t believe in, hoping that Craig will react positively to me and us. To prove that we need to treat the Others better.
Or Todd.
Something, people, give me something so they can’t go back to tying you to chairs and putting nails through your hands to see what happens.
Todd
Wednesday, I don’t like it. Therapist was kicked out. Watched the New Guy for hours. He’s hungry but pissed, and his anger hasn’t tapered off.
Kelly watched him, I can tell he’s disturbed by it. He’s wondering why New Guy isn’t eating. I tried to help it along, but he’s just not responsive to anything I try.
Kelly knows about my journal. Wanted to know who accessed it. What if he looks?
John was teaching me tech stuff, and I think I had the journal and then the journal, but what if I don’t have the extra journal? I need John, I need to know. I keep personel stuff in here.
What if they find out?
They won’t, of course they won’t.
Kelly is going to feed New Guy tomorrow. I tried to get him to do it today. Guy is built like a fortress. Him fucking me was the closest I got to reading him, and even that, it was just him thinking about his dad. Is it weird that he was thinking about his dad while he was inside of me? I think it was.
Unless that’s how he keeps us out. That would be clever. Maybe he added that to his protection.
I wonder why he didn’t have sex with me today. I wanted him to, but he didn’t. I tried being moody after the therapist, but he didn’t take the bait.
John would just tell me to say it. Maybe I should try that. John says it works all the time.
I wanted him today and didn’t say anything, so I suppose being alone tonight is my own fault. That’s kind of why I made myself the toy. I don’t want to use it, though. I just want him. Hot male over me, not thinking about women to get it up, not dripping with disgust. He’s always so closed off, his thoughts so guarded.
It makes me so hard.
The Others 