Welcome to my Substack.

After being thrown out of nearly every school I attended after the seventh grade, I had a hunch that college might be different from the confines of high school. I went on to earn a B.A. in English and an M.A. in Creative Writing, and later began a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing—a program I eventually left after realizing that, as a single parent, I would need a more stable career path. I then earned a Master of Arts in Teaching.

After a year of teaching in China with my seven-year-old daughter, I returned to the U.S. and taught writing at Portland community colleges. I later worked as a substitute teacher in high-need Los Angeles public schools. Following a nasty breakup that resulted in the loss of my Nigerian Dwarf goat herd, a failed business, and loss of stability—I focused on acrobatics, chess, and travel.

I spent five years traveling solo, funded by substitute teaching and random writing gigs. I eventually got a job teaching English, and a few other things, to women at a university in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

There, I met my Dutch partner. We traveled through Jordan and Oman and lived in Dubai for a year before relocating to the Netherlands. This transition included being stranded in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic and spending several weeks in Belgrade, Serbia, while awaiting permission to re-enter Europe.

I now live in southern France with my partner and three cats.

As the sun crawls through the window, Adilet stretches into a peaceful wakefulness in her crib. I’ve been watching her for hours now, trying to figure out just how to do it.

She makes what seem like accurate baby sounds, jerkish movements, cries for food. She indicates discomfort when her diapers are soiled. In fact, I can’t even tell she’s different from the designers. But, as my wife regularly reminds me, she is different from them.

The scores on her societal belonging tests are lower than almost everyone else in her age group. Even in my limited experience with children and babies, it’s hard for me to understand how anything at that age can be assessed other than general weight and size.

And, of course, basic progress in development. Adilet seems like an average and healthy baby to me, but I don’t even know what that is now. It seems like every week there are new reports of babies doing things that people my age can’t even do.

She gets excited when she eats, she laughs at peek-a-boo. She can focus on a small plush toy for a long time. She can now nestle into my neck and the crook of my arm when I carry her, which she couldn’t do before, when she depended solely on gravity–-no will or control of her own.

It gets harder to hold her the more Martha tells me how inadequate she is. Martha hasn’t held her since the first assessment.

We both look down at her in the crib. This is the only thing we do together. Adilet returns our gaze with all the trust in the world. It’s clear that she wants us to pick her up, but neither of us can. For Martha, Adilet is more of an object to present to the world—like a Louis Vuitton bag. But in this case the bag’s an easily identifiable fake.

I can’t articulate what Adilet means to me, but it’s not that. And it’s hard to analyze in the face of what it seems I must do. As Adilet inches towards a squirming and kicking fuss, an unquantifiable emotion surges through my veins, pounding away at and chewing on the soft tissue of my chest.

She starts to cry, small and quiet—not the exhibitionist wailing that most babies often develop as a means of getting what they need or want. I glance over at my wife, hoping for a rare moment of intimacy. Maybe she also wonders how to do it. Maybe she’ll even help.

Despite spending our savings and the last of Martha’s mother’s credits on our best shot at what we thought was our best shot at a worthy human, they tell us Adilet will never appear in any above-board database for partners or careers. She’ll be put on genetic display everywhere she goes, a glowing warning to the world. If she has a nice figure, an above plain face, she will be sterilized and placed in a brothel.

If she’s exceptionally beautiful with an amiable demeanor, she could be placed in an exclusive brothel, where with any luck she could become a Paramount Primus to wealthy men or women. This is the best outcome I can see for Adilet.

Yet neither Martha nor I are handsome people, so it’s hard to imagine her being that attractive—unless that’s the one area in which engineering succeeded, and we won’t know until she’s much older. Apparently it’s not important enough or worth the risk to integrate them into society on speculation alone. As far as I can tell, her demeanor is above average, which could be in her favor. I know I’d sacrifice Martha’s decent body for a better personality, but this isn’t something most men are willing to do.

We would have to hide her, keep her out of the public eye. Imagine. It’s hard enough with a cat or a dog, let alone a free-willed human being. Depending on her personality, she might find another disqualified counterpart and they could run away together, blindly looking for a better world.

Some do that, but it’s never a long life—just outbreed towns filled with genetic drifters hoping for some semblance of an existence. They’re raided at random, and when caught, they’re put down.

Most of them are products of organic birth. But there are some like Adilet, like us, who could only afford part of a full sequencing and had to rely on the better parts of ourselves to be passed on.

For us, the testing and check-ins are even more frequent. Adilet isn’t even a year old, and we now have to submit monthly tests and endure monthly home visits. It’s always the same – the socio-genetic analysts arrive in their lab coats with their computers and gadgets, feeding the machine with numbers and data on Adilet that we don’t even understand.

They never ask about Adilet’s personality. What makes her laugh? What face does she make when she shits?

“Can she walk across the room at this point?”

“No, not yet.”

She can’t even stand up.

At first, things looked promising. Adilet was normal, according to the now mandatory genetic societal standards. But at every benchmark after three months she fell more and more behind. More sighs of disappointment. More long silences. More notes added to the system.

Martha isn’t interested in even discussing other possibilities. There is no planning for Adilet. No chance of escape to an outbreed town to become a Paramount Primus. She’s to be returned like a pair of shoes. They fit, they function as shoes, they’re just last year’s colors. At least this is how I have to see it to stay on the same page as my wife.

All it’d take is one day in the park with our genetically superior neighbors. Their babies, the same age as Adilet, would recite Shakespeare, show off their advanced athletic skills, or run multiplication tables faster than I could. Adilet would draw unwanted attention, unwanted sympathy, or worse: feigned praise.

We could hire private teachers and playmates to come to the house, but we just don’t have the money. We could go as a family to an outbreed town, though even bringing it up would cause a fight or more distance between us.

And I keep saying we as though it’s true. Those of us alive before the transition have learned that to be married and unmodified, it’s crucial we become unified in every way. If yearly marital check-ins reveal dysfunction due to lack of unification, we will be “managed” in whatever way they deem productive.

This can mean anything from re-programming to labor centers, where people just disappear. I wonder if my wife even thinks about these things. Our second check-in is three months from now. Acting is far from my best skill. Marth thinks she’s talented after in high school playing a minor role in Agnes of God, but she isn’t. If they haven’t already noted the distance between us, they will.

I look down at Adilet in her crib. She’s growing impatient and kicking her legs in quite a fury. That is, quite a fury for her, anyway. Her face flushes and her little fists fly everywhere, to the point she punches her own face, which seems to add to her frustration.

A fatherly feeling takes over, and I can recall my own father looking at me the way I am looking at her now. I calculate this as not effective. I know that emotions spent on my wife are far more productive, but it’s difficult to suppress this feeling.

We can have more children, and this feeling can be replicated, but we can’t remarry. I tell myself just what it is: a feeling. Emotions are responsible for the vast majority of the world’s problems—we know that now. They’re strong but destructive, even in unimaginable situations like this one.

No one will ask if Adilet is just gone one day. She’s in the records as inferior. And because bio-architecting isn’t yet mandated, (though it’s coming), there’s an unspoken expectation that parents “start over” if their child isn’t capable of living a fulfilling life in the new world; it’s too much to ask of society to pay for preventable problems. If couples can’t afford it, they shouldn’t breed at all. It’s rumored that soon, couples earning less than $100,000 per year will be sterilized.

What was once inconceivable, killing your own infant, is now considered an act of mercy in situations like ours. Animals do this all the time, maybe they don’t experience emotions, just instincts—a small mercy we can learn from them.

I pick up Adilet and walk her back and forth across the bedroom. She stops crying and relaxes into my shoulder, thumb in her mouth, and falls asleep. This is a new feeling, maybe even a cluster of feelings. I haven’t felt these complex emotions with Martha, or with any other human in any other circumstance.

It’s so strong I can feel chemicals rush down the back of my neck into my chest, through my nerves, and into my eyes, making them water. I guess it could be considered crying. The last time I did that I was so young I can’t remember. If I were a scientist I’d collect the liquid and analyze it, just to make sure.

I put Adilet back in her crib, turn on the rotating musical mobile and give her a bottle with a mild, small amount of lorazepam to make sure she stays asleep. There’s some logic in it all. If she sleeps more, maybe she’ll grow more. Also, Martha becomes agitated if she’s awake too much.

I rock the crib and hum along to the music until she’s asleep.

Martha’s mother comes once a week. She brings two bottles of wine each time. Alcohol isn’t exactly forbidden, yet, but its use as a social lubricant has grown heavily out of favor under relentless messaging against it. It’s harder to find as taxes on the stuff are over fifty percent in some states, and employers now have the right to surreptitiously test their employees—even terminate them if they deem alcohol a drag on workplace productivity.

Thaedra has been hit hard by this, as she used to run the most successful wine and tobacco shop in town. Now she drinks it all away with anyone willing to keep her company, letting her feeble intellect unravel into slurred nostalgia about “how things used to be,” or her favorite pastime: mocking Martha’s decision to marry me with barbed jokes she can easily dismiss as humor.

I bring a wine glass from the kitchen into the dimly lit living room, where they’ve already had a few.

“Evening, ladies,” I reach my glass out to anyone willing to fill. “Go ahead, fill me up.”

“Roman! What rare hair’s gone up your ass that we may be blessed with your presence?” Thaedra lifts the bottle, happy to pour me some.

“Well, I finally beat the expert level,” I down a gulp of wine, uncharacteristic of me. “Chess, you know—on the computer?”

Martha drinks while her eyes come at me over the glass as she sums up the invalidity of my words. She gives Thaedra a side eye roll, a not-so-subtle indication that I’m an idiot.

“Does that do anything for us? Give us more credits?” She drinks more and with each drink I can almost see her eyes narrow. “How does chess help us as a family, Roman?”

I look at Martha, both terrified and vigilant, and slam the rest of my wine. It’s been so long since I’ve had alcohol that I let my questions and concerns out of their cage. I can feel them rush down the back of my throat like lava pushing through the earth and bursting through the crust.

“Martha, what will we tell them when they come for the unification inspection?”

I put my glass in front of Thaedra’s face for more wine.

“We are palpably not unified, and they know it.” I take the glass back and drink from it before Thaedra can even fill it up.

“Your acting skills are shit, Martha. I see through you, everyone does. Problem is, oh nevermind. I guess it’s fine—just how it is now.”

I drink the wine so fast it spills from the corners of my mouth.

“And also: how, exactly, do you want me to kill her?” I drink more.

“Am I supposed to smother her? Get her so drunk her liver fails, so at least she can have a good time on the way out? Hell, you still have some molly from your rave days—let’s use that!”

My emotions catch up to my words and there’s little I can do to stop them. I let them come, but even through my drunken warbling I know not to do anything too reckless. Words can be erased, actions can’t.

Thaedra’s glass drops, and red wine and glass splatter all over the ridiculously white couch Martha bought last year to go with Adilet—a knock-off or something similar to one she saw on a popular TV show about nothing more than how cruel people are to each other, as far as I can tell. Her hands cover her mouth.

Martha remains cool on the surface, but the Artemis pendant I bought her visibly rises and falls against her chest that can’t help but hold some aspect of humanity.

“Artemis gives you away, Martha. Just tell me how, when—what to do with Adilet’s body.”

Martha places her glass down, her hands trembling the whole way, and it seems as though she may be open to communication.

“You’re the man, Roman. I carried this burden in my body. Oxytocin, bonding hormones—all of it. So I just can’t.” She picks up her wine, trying to quiet her hand, and shakily drinks. “Now it’s me you need to protect, maybe another child if we can do it right.”

She looks me in the eye for the first time in recent memory.

“This pregnancy . . . . Adilet . . . just a casualty of circumstance. We can do better, again, but not while…” She looks up the stairs. “not until you . . .”

I pace the room as blood burns in my veins. I know that in this world she’s right. I’d just wished Adilet did, or would do something that could justify such an act.

“She’s not a crippled horse, Martha. I can’t just . . .”

“But that’s where you’re wrong, Roman. She is.”

Martha’s words are sobering.

Adilet starts to cry from upstairs. Not a wail, just a soft, seeking sound. My feet move before my thoughts catch up. Up the stairs, into the brightly lit nursery that Martha tried to emulate from a celebrity’s nursery.

She’s small and vulnerable. I lift her, her hands grasp weakly at my shirt. The weight of expectation presses down on me like an anvil. I’m supposed to decide. To act. But as I look into Adilet’s wide, trusting eyes I realize for the first time that she has my eyes. It must be the wine – either some kind of awareness tool or the great deceiver.

David Bircham, who now goes by Birch, was an old high school friend. He was the school’s tech wizard, so much so that he often helped the teachers with classroom computers and tech in general. He was even offered a modified education because of it. I remember envying him for not having to take literature courses.

Birch now makes what is I’m sure a considerable, and probably dangerous living helping genetic inferiors pass their progress reports. I don’t know for how much longer he’ll be able to continue, as new regulations pop up almost daily now.

I take a bottle from the warmer and hand it to Adilet. She clumsily reaches for it and moves her head side-to-side until her mouth finds it. It’s the same ritual she once had with Martha’s breasts. But breastfeeding also ended after the first progress report. Once this plastic substitute for a breast makes its way into her mouth, she closes her eyes, and I head back downstairs.

Martha and Thaedra look at me as though I’d already done it, hoping I had. Remarkably sobered up, but grateful for the lingering effects of the wine, I sit down next to Martha. She moves herself so that she’s a few inches away from where I sit.

“No, I didn’t do it because I have an idea. Birch, do you remember David Birch?”

Martha interrupts me. “Yes, he was the real IT in school. And, yes, I know what he does now.”

“What does he do now?” Thaedra asks.

“He helps people like us. Like Adliet. He uses tech instead of genetics to help people pass the progress tests, get into the system.”

“So you’re saying you want to do what, exactly? Like, do you even know the details? I mean – it’s interesting, it really is interesting,” Martha tries to conceal her excitement. “It’d sure be nice to be able to go to lunch with my friends again, to be invited to birthday parties.“

“What can go wrong? It can’t be worse than what you’re both discussing now,” Thaedra says, making a good point.

The next morning we prepare Adilet for a rare trip in the stroller. Birch isn’t so far away—about a half an hour on foot. It’s late spring. Bird song fills the trees and the smell of growth and renewal fill the air. Adilet kicks and shuffles and gurgles attempts at words that seem to indicate excitement. But I can’t open the hood of the stroller, so she isn’t able to experience it. This was Martha’s rule for the outing. Oh, and I’m not allowed to stop and talk with any of the other parents.

We arrive at what looks like a small, shabby local grocery store. A sign reads Birch’s Pantry so I know we’re at the right address. I walk in backwards, as this is the only way to get in while pushing a stroller alone, and a bell goes off.

Birch, bald now, emerges from a heavy metal door with multiple locks, disproportionate to the shabby state of the shop. The door closes hard behind him, and the locks move into place.

“Is that Roman Lynch? And a baby Roman? You kept your hair, you lucky fucker,” his ease with jokes of familiarity are both unnerving and comforting.

“What do you need, want, desire?”

He points to some crates of strange looking produce.

“Got some of these new spliced apple-melons that are pretty good – maybe one of the best things about this whole move towards: out-with-the-old-and-in-with-anything-but-us, right?”

It occurs to me that Martha might appreciate such spliced fruit, as it’d be something she could brag about eating, assuming they’re considered luxury items.

“Don’t worry about the hair, David—I can call you that, right? Hair hasn’t seemed to make my life any easier.”

It just wouldn’t be authentic for me to call him by this new name.

“Oh boy. I sense someone’s not here for apple-melons or tampons. And, sure—haven’t seen you since then, so it makes sense. Maybe being called ‘David’ will bring back the hair, right?”

No one’s in the shop, so I pull the top of the stroller back and Adilet tries to lift her body to see as much world as she can. When she sees David he makes baby noises and plays peek-a-boo. She laughs and kicks and flails her hands into almost claps. We had pretty much stopped playing games with her, so it was both refreshing and agonizing to see her happy and responsive in this way.

“This is Adilet,” and rather than glowing with pride, as I suspect other parents do, I present her as though she’s Quasimodo.

“She looks just like you—maybe her mom’s mouth. You Married Martha, right? Not bad, but a bit too flat chested for my taste. Then again, look at me – I’ll be lucky to have a half-smart robot with soft holes accompany me in my old age.”

He looked down at his fat body with stains on an old, white T-shirt.

The conversation becomes unsettling. I want to get to the point. I don’t want to think about David fucking robots. And for the first time I actually feel sorry for robots.

“Look. This is awkward, David, but she, Adilet—she’s not progressing physically. She may not even be at the benchmark for normal before all of this started.”

I level with him.

“I know, plenty of people know what you do. I wouldn’t be here if I, if we—well, if we weren’t desperate. I know you know what’s expected of us in this situation.”

This isn’t the first time he’s helped people with similar problems. He shifts his demeanor into something more serious and nods his head. He opens the heavy door for us to walk through.

Inside the small, dark room tech of all kinds clutters the space. There are computers of all shapes and sizes, new and old. Exercise equipment, a shelf with books spilling over and a few chairs with straps on them are the only recognizable comforts in the room. There’s an area with basic medical equipment and surgeon’s tools.

“Have a seat,” David gestures to me to sit in an office chair modified with restraints.

I sit down and push the stroller back and forth to keep Adilet from becoming loud or upset.

“You can pick her up, you know. I mean, wouldn’t that be better? She can see stuff, bond with you?” David’s words hit me like a thousand poisoned pinpricks to the chest.

“She’s used to it, being in the stroller or crib. She likes it – she’s actually a really well behaved baby, so at least there’s that . . . but that’s obviously not good enough.” This logic feels thin, but it’s all I can think to say.

“Not to be a know-it-all, here, but you do realize not holding a kid, a baby, whatever – kinda fucks them up, right?”

This hadn’t occurred to me. The poison turns into shame, and my face burns red.

“Look, we’ve done all we can. We have one more progress report before, well . . . Can you get her physically up to par? Maybe even beyond . . . in some way she just has to be extra.“

David looks at me like I am the smallest, most loathsome creature on earth for about twenty seconds and then he snaps into perfunctory professional mode.

“You know, sure—sure, Roman. Though I can honestly say I haven’t done one so young,” David almost cracks a smile to highlight the perverted joke hidden in what he’s said, but he thinks better of it as my mood and barely held together composure radiate throughout the room.

“Doesn’t really matter, since everyone’s basal ganglia is in the same place and easily accessible – shouldn’t be a problem,” he continues.

I’m embarrassed not to know where in the brain this is or even what it’s responsible for.

“So where in the brain . . . well, I guess what in the brain is the better question?”

He jabs my forehead with his pointer finger, hard enough for it to add to my agitation.

“Your frontal lobe—and just a chip the size of a grain of rice inserted through the nostril. But we do need to give her a little something, as it’s not exactly painless. So just a little something for pain and a mild sedative. She’ll be fine.”

It sounds too good to be true, but technology and biology are so advanced. I’m sure it’s all been vetted a hundred times over by now. David wouldn’t be in business if there were problems.

“And then how long does it take? What happens?”

“Bioplasma, plasma-based energy pulses. For a non-baby it takes anywhere from ten minutes to an hour. No clue in this case.” David drinks some water and looks down at Adilet who is making baby sounds and trying to engage him for another round of peek-a-boo.

“You know what? It’s on the house—you wouldn’t be here if the situation weren’t dire. We go way back, right?”

My mouth drops open in shock. I don’t expect this kindness from anyone anymore.

“I don’t know what to say, really.” And I mean this, it’s not just an empty phrase said for the millionth untrue time.

“I’ll insert the nodule in such a way that it reaches the cerebellum, too – that should knock their charts for a loop.”

David’s confidence gives me confidence.

“There are risks. I mean, it’s a brain—a very small one at that—anything can happen. Maybe some behavioral changes, but you just can’t know with one so young. I haven’t had any major problems, nothing worse than not being part of the herd, anyway.”

Like Thaedra said, what could be worse than having to kill Adilet?

After an injection of painkiller and sedatives, Adilet’s eyes widen in shock and she lets out a sound I’ve never heard from her before. An urge rises in me to comfort her, as I imagine the injection is the worst pain she’s experienced at this point in her life, but she’s asleep before I can even process the emotion.

David pulls what looks like a lobotomy tool from beneath a cloth on a cart. He picks up the rice-sized chip from a box of what appears to be hundreds more of them, and looks at the screen that shows us the inside of Adilet’s brain. He slowly and carefully inserts the tool up her right nostril until it comes into view on the screen. And I decide there must be a finite source of emotion, because I feel nothing.

“Just a little to the right, should do the trick . . . and done.”

After about an hour of catching up—mostly learning that David is not capable of maintaining a relationship, and that should Adilet become some kind of mistress it’s men like him she’d have to endure, I feel even more confident about what I’ve just done.

Then she slowly wakes up. First, her head moves from side to side; then she stretches her hands over her head, her legs all the way down to her toes: a complete stretch. Her eyes struggle to open. Anxious to leave, I put a prepared bottle into Adilet’s mouth, and make sure Birch-slash-David knows how much we appreciate him—even though I find him to be repugnant.

It is possible to hold two opposing emotions at once.

On the walk home Adilet doesn’t move much at all. A sense of dread fills the cracks of anything left in me that can absorb emotion. She’s different. Her eyes no longer look up at me with that innocence and trust I know almost more than anything else about her. She stares into the hood of her stroller at a fixed point. Her eyes seem darker.

We arrive home and Martha opens the door before we can even get to the porch. She comes out to greet us, followed by Thaedra—visibly drunk in her loose fitting polyester dress that looks like something Hawaii would regurgitate if it were a sick or a hungover person.

Martha tries to hold back a smile, but her body carries an excitement as she moves towards us that I haven’t seen in months. The difference is palpable. Martha holds the front door open, while Thaedra and I lift the stroller up two stairs into the house.

“It occurred to me, we didn’t really talk about money—must’ve been the wine!” Martha looks over at Thaedra, our fiscal Plan B.

“Birch said ‘it’s on the house,’ something about me having hair, I think.”

I’m not sure if I actually believe this, but I don’t have the energy to philosophize over this.

“I don’t trust anything that’s free,” Thaedra slurs. “Look what a bargain you got before— and now you expect free to be better?!”

Martha and I lock eyes and together choose to ignore this cutthroat logic, but the joy of this togetherness is cut short by anticipation. We all stare at the stroller until anything happens. Adilet is still, and her stare is cold and immoveable. She doesn’t even kick or move her head.

“Well it doesn’t take a genius to figure out you need to get her out of the damn buggy, does it?” Thaedra drunkenly grumps.

“Go ahead—you do it, Roman. Put her on the ground,” Martha urges.

I pull back the top of the stroller, remove the blanket, and pick her up. Her body is stiff and she refuses eye contact. I suppress any speculation or emotion and put her on her back on the carpeted floor.

And then, change.

She rolls to her side, onto her stomach, and pushes herself up into a sitting position. She looks around the room robotically, but still has no eye contact with anyone. The cat catches her attention.

She makes a few attempts at standing and fails, but on a fourth attempt she is up on two feet, adjusting herself for what optimal balance. Then she takes a few slow steps, a few faster steps, and then she runs to the cat who sits on a kitchen chair and is probably just as shocked as we are.

Martha watches her like she sees her for the first time—like Adilet is a new car or boat. Thaedra’s jaw drops and her hand covers her mouth.

When Adilet reaches the cat, she lets out a terrible noise—something I’ve never heard or imagined coming from an infant, let alone Adilet. The howl of a rabid wolf shrilling in the undeveloped throat of an infant. The cat lurches back, but doesn’t run off. In that most fucked of minutes, Adilet’s hands begin to choke the cat’s neck with terrifying precision, and she attempts to bite the cat.

“Roman, just put the cat outside so she can learn without distraction. This is a miracle! Can you believe it, Roman?!”

And this is where I realize Martha and I no longer breathe the same air. I envy her ignorance and suppose it really is bliss. I’d give anything to not have to digest every misstep, every increasingly dystopian election and crack in society that have brought us to this point.

The cat rescues himself. Deep scratches line Adilet’s face and arms, and she flies into a rage. She runs over to a cabinet, not the clumsy run of an infant just learning, but of an athletic adult laser focused on winning a medal.

She throws the plant against the wall and pierces the room with unnatural sounds, deep and raw. Before, even when she was hungry, her cries were just a quiet build up of fusses – like the phone ringing or the ping of an e-mail. Our living room now feels like a scene from horror films I’ve seen, but I can’t turn it off.

Adilet runs to Martha, and the disproportionate rage keeps up its momentum. She buries her head into Martha’s lap. Within seconds Martha yowls in agony and grabs a fistful of Adliet’s hair, and throws her as far as she can. Adilet hits a wall and crumples to the floor.

Martha’s leg reveals small, bleeding gashes. Adilet’s four tiny front teeth managed to cut Martha deeply. Thaedra’s hands have been over her mouth since the cat, an understandable if passive reaction. Martha jumps from the couch like she’d been struck by lightning and runs to the kitchen.

Adilet’s cries change, suddenly and drastically. She buries her head in her hands. Her sobs are filled with a palpable pain. Her otherworldly rage has morphed into a sadness that shrinks the room into a breathless brick. A new terror changes me. I become a prehistoric self, someone distinctly not me—who must take action without reflection in order to save my family.

Thaedra leaps from the couch towards the front door, but her legs can’t keep up with her desire to escape, and she trips on her way out. Martha runs upstairs to our bedroom and locks the door behind her. I console Adilet, who is at this point simply a damaged algorithm at the mercy of a cruel world and ill equipped parents.

I approach her fearlessly. She reaches for me—bloody mouthed, scratched and bruised—the least of her wounds. I walk her up the stairs into her own room, and she leans her strong, new body in the direction of her crib. I put her inside her crib, under a plush white blanket with satin trim. As she makes herself comfortable, blood turns the white but never innocent bedding into a patchwork of genetic failure.

Adilet looks up at me. She must have snapped back from whatever hell we sent her to, only to resume the hell here that we all share. But I’m not looking into my eyes anymore – they hold burden and knowledge and forgiveness. Mine barely cling to color. In this unexpected moment of clarity and acceptance, I see my daughter for the first and last time.

She looks over where the bottles sit in row, heated and ready for consumption. I nod my head, get one of the bottles, and the last of the lorazepam—enough to put anyone into a Shakespearean sleep. As I pour the lorazepam into her bottle, she reaches out for it with an increasing urgency and her eyes start to change again. With athletic precision she takes the bottle and sucks it down in an ironic act of survival.

Her eyes focus on mine until they close. I smile at her and rub her belly, until her hands drop the bottle and her breathing slows into nothing.

I sit with my back against the crib and stare out the window until the light changes, and listen to the sounds of Martha taking a shower—imagining her carefully cleaning her wound, in one final moment of intimacy with Adliet. Downstairs, Thaedra cleans up glass and recycles bottles, every once in a while shouting something into the void.

Once Martha’s shower water turned off, I turned and looked at my human baby, now at peace. I wait for her to miraculously open her eyes, so that I can apologize. But what would I apologize for?

Martha opens the door and walks into the room. She’s wearing a white satin robe, and her wounds are bandaged. She smells faintly of springtime, an oil or soap I’ve not smelled before. There’s nothing in her step or voice that suggests we’d just experienced horror and heartbreak.

“She’s . . . I mean, is she asleep? Like, really asleep, Roman?” She reaches for me, but it’s clear real touch isn’t her intention.

“She’s gone, her suffering is over,” I take her hands, expecting closeness but numb to any outcome.

Her eyes are filled with the same resolve and denial.

“Okay, okay—that’s, well, it’s great.”

She drops my hands, rubs her eyes, and removes the clip from her hair to shake it out, like a dog shaking out its fur after a nap.

“Her suffering? Really, Roman, look at my leg, and the poor cat!”

“Have you ever fantasized about being tied up?” I ask Tilly.

Tilly’s an urban housewife—a soccer mom, to be exact. She drives a deep purple minivan and wears just enough makeup to set her apart from the others. She had been a heavy smoker before having kids, so we started there.

One side of her mouth lifts unnaturally, like she’s trying to force a smile that she hasn’t used in a while. Her head moves to the side simultaneously.

“...even just a little?”

“Where the fuck did that come from? Did you just read a Japanese novel or something?”

None of the other mothers would have even made that reference.

“No, I’ve seen the movies. So, have you ever done anything like that, or wanted to?”

Tilly glances over at the playground where her kids, dressed in the best soccer gear, kick a ball back-and-forth in the mud with other kids dressed the same way. She looks to see if the other moms are within earshot.

“Once, in college, I dated this Czech. He wasn’t a dumb jock like the American boys I was used to. I could smoke cigarettes with him, even a little pot.”

“That’s it? That’s your big whoop-da-loli—smoked some cigs with a foreigner...”

I look flatly at her and start to wonder if I chose the wrong research subject.

“I agreed to let him blindfold me. Actually, it was my idea. I didn’t want to know what was going to happen,” Tilly memoirs aloud, still looking over at her kids.

“I always knew what was going to happen. I knew my mother would call every Sunday morning to check in. I knew that there’d be no more oral sex. And I knew that America would ultimately push anyone not American out. This was it—I had to love a foreigner.”

My imagination gets the better of me. I put myself in the room with Tilly and the Czech. While she silently recalls memories, I make up new ones.

Tilly, sitting upright and nervous in bed, the covers pulled up to her navel, her college-pink Victoria’s Secret bra still on. The Czech had just finished eating her out—half-hard, politely waiting for her to invite him in. He knows it’s her first time, so he takes his time with her. And he’s undoubtedly got a sense of style: again, un-American.

I settle into watching her kids play ball while my kid, of course, does not play ball. No, mine’s up a tree tossing her shoes and any other unnecessary article of clothing to the ground. She likes to watch boys fetch them and climb them back up the tree to her in her faerie throne; surrounded by spring magnolias, thick and their cups relentlessly filled with bees. These games hold out as long as they are fun and as long as snacks hold out.

Tilly starts to tell her story. I keep pieces of my own and make room for hers.

“He smiled, went to my closet and got the scarf my grandmother knitted for me.”

I’m shocked by this sudden clarity in her. A focus had taken over, and she was about to tell me everything.

“He stood behind me—like a gentle wall, and wrapped my eyes shut with the scarf. I couldn’t see, but I could smell—a new way of seeing, I guess, if you can call it that...”

She looks at me, thankful and almost relieved.

“My father drops papers from his hands to cover my eyes. I see through the skin and bone as my little brother lets go of my plain church skirt to sneak across the floor where our mother’s wrongly timed, brilliant eyes look for us from behind the chair. Fighting my father’s grip, I grasp at any piece of my brother’s crippled and unaware body. My father’s other hand lets go of me in an attempt to snatch him; his two children’s lives now dependent on the reach of weakened right and left hands. My mother is only a shout’s length away from men at the windows with bullets; men whose eyes glow like night snakes. And a different kind of loudness fills the room. The sound of not enough hands to grab at living mothers, fallen papers or crippled sons.

Now this mom, this chair and yesterday’s comforting stories quake on the floor, where only last night we all sat full and warm, ready to hear stories, “...wonders bright and limits none, monsters work hard in tomorrow’s sun,” my mother read. The faint smell of pancakes still clings to the air.

Nothing moves but the smoke swirling through the air, my mother’s twitching body and the papers my father had dropped catch what seems to be my mother’s last heavy breath. My brother, too scared to breathe, crawls to save my mother as her blood covers more and more floor, inching towards us. The papers. My father snatches the bloody papers and shoves them down the back of my dress; he kisses my head hard and tears fall—hot, sticky and warm. He opens the cellar door and lowers me down. My brother sobs, causing the men outside to stick the wet noses of their guns back inside our house. I run so hard, so fast until I can’t breathe or fall; my knees become raspberr-ied starting blocks. I can’t remember my age. I run until I encounter someone else who’s lost everything.

We smash into each other like particles carefully placed in an accelerator. We fall into an ocean’s sleep and in it see water-breathing stars, infinite birth and death cycles of unrecognizable beings. Always, our bodies smashed together so that we can’t come apart. And then we wake up: older, someplace else, in a new world and time. Knowing what we’d collectively seen and that there is no one else but the two of us. We become each other. Our mothers and fathers—brothers, selves, monsters and sisters.”

A velvety dullness coats itself over my tired, adult sexuality. I nestle in closer to Tilly, despite it being hot, and I let my posture sink to get even closer to her. She’s significantly shorter than me, blonde by birth and smells like the Duty Free section of all major airports. This isn’t any other woman. To my surprise, she returns the gesture and meets my physical vulnerability. We make sure the kids aren’t killing each other or falling out of trees, and she gets back to it.

“He sat me down—never said a word, not once, and neither did I. He took off my clothes, one piece at a time, sometimes taking long breaks between each one.”

She stops to wave and smile at one of the kids who’s just won a race. Then she continues.

“I imagine the soldier who’d blown this family into the wooden floors, who paced the room like a metronome—with the exception of the space in time it takes to step over each corpse—less or more, depending on the size of the body.”

She puts her hands in her pocket, which separates us a little, and it makes me sad.

“He manages to smoke a couple cigarettes—I’m down to socks, afraid of losing my virginity with socks still on my feet. The chair fills with sweat, my hands tingle like nearly dead sea creatures. Each sound he makes takes on a texture of its own: something new and first, and something never again. The letters. My father’s letters. Return addresses.”

Tilly waves her kids back for snacks. They run over from the soccer field. She asks if my daughter’s hungry, but I’ve seen a few boys climb their snacks up the tree to her. At least she still had all of her clothes on. Tilly’s boys inhale their cheese sticks, toss the empty wrappers on the ground and rush back to playing ball. They never really look at us.

“It got quiet, stayed that way for longer than was comfortable. I sensed that no one was in the room. I fought back against the sounds of reality. Tears and sweat and fear and all. I took off the scarf. No one was there, just a note on the bed written in Czech:

“My spirit was in heat. My soul, yours in another body. I still don’t know if I’ve ever really made love. It’s not really me who wants it, it’s everyone. So, to answer your question, yeah—I guess it hurts everyone.”

Tilly packs up her things, calls the kids over and goes home to make tacos and to have sex after the dishes are done. I go and convince my daughter to come out of the tree. Since the boys had already fed her dinner, we get ice cream. I let her wear the unicorn outfit.

I spent the fall planning an imaginary war: one where nobody dies, but we love and live like the last little sensations of taste or touch.

Stuck in real love with an imaginary Czech, I start knitting a scarf to keep him warm. I hike the winter months and find places in the woods where we could camp in caves, find our way into snow drifts and have picnics of honey and snow.

And I would thank Tilly for teaching me how utterly boring it is to be tied up.