One In One Out

“I hate this stupid, stupid policy,” Karen said. She pushed herself away from the desk and stood up. “It’s just not fair that we have to wait for someone to die just so we can have a baby.”

“I know, babe,” Todd said. “I know.”

All their lives, Todd and Karen had been in favor of the policy, genuinely believing in its purpose. But now that they were ready to have a child of their own, and they’d begun feeling the pangs of biological drive and government pulling at each other in opposite directions.

When Todd and Karen first decided they wanted to become pregnant, they made a list of family members whose health was failing - or, they hoped, would be failing in the near future. At the top of their list was Todd’s great uncle, Paul. He’d recently broken his second hip, which, as a coworker told him, “Once the second hip goes, it’s only a matter of time.” Todd didn’t know if this was true or not, but added him to the list anyway. Karen’s cousin, Carly, also made the list. She was eleven and battling a rare form of cancer whose survival rate teetered just over six percent. “If Carly’s parents agree,” Karen said. “Chances are we could get pregnant before Christmas!” She let out a small squeal and clapped her hands in excitement.

Approaching anyone about his death wasn’t an easy conversation to have, especially since it was about bringing another life into the world. To help, Karen and Todd ordered almost every book on the topic they could get their hands on. Each night after work they huddled over the books highlighting various sections and carefully scrawling notes in the margins. It reminded them of all the times they’d spent in the library at college studying together.

By the time they spoke with Paul, he had already signed a Life Contract with Todd’s cousin. “How could he do that?” Karen cried. “He knew we have been trying to have a baby for awhile now.”

When they approached Carly’s family, the conversation ended in a barrage of tears and Carly’s father telling Todd and Karen to never contact them again. The books had warned them of such reactions:

Coming to terms with a loved one’s nearing death is a difficult process. Prepare for the possibility of strained familial relationships. If family members do accept, expect them to resent your child once it’s born, as it may remind them of their departed loved one. This is especially true if the person who passed away was particularly young.

“What if we talk to friends?” Karen said. She grew more desperate and was even willing to risk sabotaging relationships. The books said this was also normal.

“Maybe we take out a loan and go talk to an Arrangement Agency?” Todd suggested.

“You know we can’t afford one of those!” Karen said. “They’re for the rich. If we took out a loan, we’d spend the rest of our lives paying it off.”

They also placed their names on lists at neighboring hospitals, which were for people who passed away but didn’t have ties to anyone else in the world, family or otherwise. One had better odds at winning the lottery than getting a Life Contract through a hospital.

“So what do we do now?” Karen asked.

“We could take out an ad in the local newspaper and negotiate a contract that way?” Todd said. “We have a little bit of money we could set aside.”

“But that’s about as promising as the hospital route. People would rather go through the Arrangement Agencies than newspaper ads.”

“I don’t know what other options we have, unless we try nursing homes, but I don’t want to go to prison for that.” Some people had become so desperate they would pose as family members of people suffering from Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia in order to trick them into signing a contract. It was highly illegal.

“I guess that settles it, then. We’ll put an ad in the paper.”

Each time Karen tapped at the keys on her laptop, she immediately pressed backspace until she was staring at a blank page again. After an hour and numerous false starts, she asked Todd for help.

“Have you looked at the book?” Todd asked.

“Yeah, but all of their examples make me want to vomit. And besides, if we just copy what they’ve written, our ad will never stand out, because that’s what pretty much everyone does.”

“I’ve got an idea.” Todd said. “Let me type.” He scooted up to the computer and typed:

Dying wife desperately trying to become mother to carry on family name. Serious inquires only.

Todd and Karen were surprised at the number of responses they received the following week. They felt a little guilty at first, but justified it by telling themselves that their ad hadn’t been a complete lie. Technically speaking, Karen was dying. She had been on the path to death since the day she was born, just like everyone else on the planet. And she did want a baby before it happened. By the time they had signed their Life Contract, the guilt had disappeared completely.

According to her doctors, Karen’s pregnancy was textbook. She was healthy, the baby was healthy, and the expecting mother and father were brimming with excitement and fear all wrapped in one. But during the delivery things went terribly wrong. The umbilical cord had gotten wrapped around the baby’s neck, and Karen’s body wasn’t strong enough to endure the doctor’s attempt to save her child. Both mother and child died before they ever got to feel each others embrace.

After the funeral, people waited a week before they began inquiring about the two new Life Contracts available, but the calls were too much to for the heartbroken husband and father to handle. As the phone rang in the background, Todd sat down to write one last ad:

Free: Three Life Contracts. 318 Roosevelt Drive. No need to knock. The door will be open. First come, first serve.

Written by: Michael Williams

Photograph by: Sophie Stuart

When Hammers Swing

If you happened to need a detailed map of the Lunder’s backyard and the woods surrounding it, all you would have to do is ask their youngest son, Jeremy. He was meticulous, exploring every iota of land within a quarter-mile radius behind their home. Jeremy was a gypsy when it came to his outside adventures, never playing in one location for more than a few days.

Jeremy’s current obsession was an abandoned set of railroad tracks situated behind his house. To an adult, it looked like an eyesore, because it was where people living in the country came to illegally dump unwanted household appliances. But to Jeremy it was a world of possibilities: shoes that would let him jump like a grasshopper, a flying bicycle, a refrigerator that would teleport him to other planets. The things he imagined himself inventing!

During his first trip, he surveyed the area, bouncing from the rusted-out stove to a refrigerator that sat askew, just like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. A few feet over laid a microwave and a window AC unit. There were more treasures littered all over the place, of course. These were merely the highlights of the inventory.

Jeremy didn’t know if it was intentional or not, but these appliances were arranged as though they sat in some sort of invisible kitchen. Was it possible there were people who lived in this area and at night they came out and plugged the appliances into the trees to cook delicious feasts for themselves and their opossum neighbors? The thoughts that crossed Jeremy’s mind!

Today was Jeremy’s third trip to the abandoned railroad tracks. This time he remembered to bring a hammer. He intended to use it to pry apart old railroad ties so he could capture a lizard hiding inside. His success was limited. Even though he was able to wedge the claw of the hammer into one of the many grooves, his little arms weren’t strong enough to pry the old wood apart. He stuck to the low-hanging fruit and split apart the little slivers at the top, but it was useless; that wasn’t where the lizards hung out. And if he did manage to get lucky and spot one, there was no point in chasing after it. The suckers were fast, darting off and juking wildly to the left or right just when Jeremy thought he had one cornered.

Frustrated and growing bored of lizard hunting, Jeremy decided to dissect some of the kitchen appliances. He’d long forgotten his story about the people who lived in the woods and how they might need a working stove or refrigerator later that evening. A hammer in the hand of a little boy will forever trump the needs of invisible strangers.

There wasn’t much damage he could inflict on the stove, other than a few dents and dings on its rusty side panels. It was the same frustrating story for the refrigerator. He managed to work over the microwave a little, but it was stubborn. The window on its door wasn’t glass, but some sort of plastic Jeremy classified as indestructible.

As Jeremy wondered if he should have brought a screwdriver instead of a hammer, he spotted a TV off in the distance. It was the mother lode of discoveries, the kind of score every eight-year-old boy wielding a hammer hopes to find. It had a humongous glass screen, and Jeremy was determined to find out what was on the other side.

He sized up the TV as though it were a boxing opponent and took a swing at the glass. Despite being a direct hit, the hammer bounced off the screen as if it were made of rubber, almost causing Jeremy to drop it. He took another swing and got the same result. After several more swings, a crack appeared, but it was so thin it could almost have been mistaken for a strand of hair. So far, the TV was turning out to be as much of a disappointment as all the other appliances. In Jeremy’s mind, it should have only taken one blow for the entire thing to shatter the way a window does after Jean-Claude Van Damme roundhouses a bad guy through it. Maybe I should have brought Jean-Claude Van Damme, Jeremy sniggered to himself.

After five minutes of working the TV over with the hammer, Jeremy decided to take a break. The tube was close to breaking, but he was sweating and out of breath. After a few moments, an imaginary steam whistle sounded and Jeremy slapped his hands on his thighs, picked up his hammer and stood up. “Alright boys! Back to work!” he said to himself.

With two more swings, Jeremy managed to bust open the TV’s screen. It didn’t shatter and fall as one broken sheet like he’d wanted. The hole he made was only the size of a nickel. The success hadn’t been gratuitous, but it was a success, and he would take it. As he chipped away at the hole, it quickly turned into an opening the size of a coffee can. He gathered all the strength he had and swung as hard as he could. He hoped he would be able to shatter at least one half of the remaining glass, but instead, he completely missed and the hammer plunged right into the hole he’d already made. As it did, the top of his thumb caught on a piece of the jagged glass which gouged out a chunk of his flesh. He was amazed at how little such a wound actually hurt.

At first, the blood slowly worked its way out of the spot the flesh had been only moments prior. It was like a snake sleepily emerging from a hole until it began pouring out and painting his suntanned hand. The sudden appearance of so much blood opened Jeremy’s eyes: the small wound hurt more than anything he had ever experienced before. As he frantically pedaled back home to his mom, somewhere near a TV with a broken screen, laid a hammer forgotten to the rest of the world.

Written by: Michael Williams
Photograph by: Anna Westbury

Law 203B

My wife thought I was joking when I told her I had killed someone once.

“You’re such a shit. You did not!” she said with a smile, taking another sip of her wine.

“I did.” I said, no smile on my face.

We went back and forth like this a few times, her laughter growing more apprehensive each round.

“Alright,” she began. “If you did kill a guy, then how’d you do it?”

“You really want to know?”

She nodded.

“Well,” I said. “I stabbed him. Here… Here… And here.” I pointed to my stomach, heart and throat. “Are you sure you want to hear this?”

“Yes, I really, really do,” she said. Her smile had long since disappeared, her face flooded with concern. Should she fear me, or should she love me? Couldn’t she do both? These were questions her mind couldn’t answer. Or maybe it could but was too afraid to do so. 

“Okay…” I said, drawing in a deep breath. “First I stabbed him in the heart, then the stomach.” I paused to take a sip of my whiskey. “Then I cut open his throat.” I felt I had said too much at this point, but that’s what happens when you have almost four glasses of Knob Creek coursing through your veins.

She still wasn’t convinced I had actually killed somebody. But at the same time, she wasn’t convinced I hadn’t killed someone either. She gulped the rest of her wine, eager to refill her glass. I followed her lead and downed the rest of my whiskey.

As the alcohol made our minds heavy and dull, I continued telling my wife about the man I’d killed. I was twenty-three at the time, fresh out of college and living on my own along a small highway north of Lawrenceville. The man had knocked on the door of the house I was renting.

“I’m sorry to bother you,” he said. “But would you be able to give me a lift to the gas station? I ran out about a mile back.”

I couldn’t place my finger on it, but there was something about him that made me feel uneasy. His words weren’t genuine, and when he spoke, he filled the space between us with ill intention as thick and sticky as the air on a hot, humid day.

“Sure,” I said. “Let me just grab my keys.”

I came back to the door. The man wedged his boot into the doorframe and had a gun drawn. “Give me your keys,” he said. Up until that point, I had never been in a fight in my life, but at that moment, something inside me took over like a set of instructions my body had to obey. The next thing I remembered was looking down and seeing the man’s lifeless body lying in a pool of his own blood. His name, as the cops told me, was Robert Sanderson, a local meth head.

“I know this was self defense,” the police officer said. “Ain’t no doubt about that, but the way you killed this man… Looks like you really knew what you were doing here.”

After that night, my wife was cold and distant. She only said the bare minimum and came up with excuses that kept her away from the house as long as possible. I didn’t know if she was afraid of me or angry.

“What’s going on?” I asked over dinner one night. “Are you mad at me for what I said the other night?”

She didn’t answer, just stared down at her plate, nuzzling her food with her fork.

“Well?” I said, my voice swelling with anger.

Finally she said, “I want you to get the test.”

The killing gene test was developed five years ago by a scientist named Dr. Alex Sherman. One small drop of blood could easily identify if someone carried what Dr. Sherman called the killing gene. If you had it, it meant you were hardwired to become a killer, and the evidence supporting his research was overwhelming. And by overwhelming, I mean one hundred percent accurate. At first Dr. Sherman’s discovery was controversial, but pretty soon politicians began using it as part of their political platforms. This lead to the passing of Law 203B, or as it was more popularly referred to: the Killing Gene Law. The law required the pre-emptive arrest of anyone testing positive, even newborns. Once arrested, carriers were sent to specially designed prisons the press had dubbed Killer Camp. There are lots of theories surrounding what goes on at these camps, but no one knows for sure. Despite all this, the public still embraced the law.

“You can’t be serious!” I said. “I killed that man out of self-defense, and you know it.”

“I have to know,” my wife said. “I’m scared.”

As she finished her words, the world around me became fuzzy. My thoughts were suddenly mangled and confused. My body felt heavy and clumsy. And then everything went dark. I woke up a few hours later, tied to a dining room chair. My father-in-law was there. I assumed she was the one who tied me up.

“Candice told me everything,” he said. “We just have to make sure you’re not one of them. You understand, right?”

I didn’t say anything. I was too angry.

“The cops will be here in a few minutes,” he continued.

“Where is Candice?” I asked.

“She’s with her mother. Said she can’t come back until she knows she’s safe.”

During my third day at the Lawrence County Jail, an older doctor visited my cell late in the afternoon. With him were two police officers and a man wearing a suit, a lawyer I assumed.

Without any greeting, he jumped right into it, “I’m afraid you have the killing gene.”

“You’ll be transferred to killer camp in the morning,” one of the officers told me as he walked off, grinning sadistically.

Written by: Michael Williams

Photograph by: Whitney Ott