In My Infancy

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In My Infancy

         I lie against the bosom of the girl I was sent to capture three weeks ago. Since the first day I found her hiding at the old farm, lapping up the warm milk straight from a cow like a barn cat, I’ve been captivated by her. She strokes my hair; her fingertips trail across my bristled jaw line, caress my throat. For a moment I forget my own name.
         “Remie?” Tanna’s breathy words swirl through my ear canal and down my spine. “What’s it like?”
         Rembrandt Chase, bounty hunter for the U.S. Nova Y Lost Souls unit. My beautiful Tanna—a lost soul. I close my eyes and try to forget again. I kiss her soft neck and murmur. “What’s what like?”
         “You know,” Tanna moans as she pulls away and leans against a fallen tree behind us. “Nova Youth.” Strawberry locks fall across her narrow shoulders.
         “I don’t know.” I hold my breath as I sit up and see her changed face.
         Her baby blue eyes flutter, then stare down at the soft grass covering the hard earth beneath us.
         A sigh leaves my lips. She’s told me all about her life, growing up with her late mother, living on the run. She’s told me of the hunger and of the cold nights, but also of the hope, the freedom, the things her mama taught her, and of the deep love they shared. How could she understand a childhood like mine—imprisoned and virtually unconscious year after year, hooked up to a government-approved “nurturing” machine, void of living parents. Instead I clear my throat and answer, “I have just blurs of images from my infancy.”
         “Fuck, I really hate it when you call it that. My infancy—it was your entire childhood for Christ’s sake.”
         I fight a cringe when I hear her cuss. Nobody I know talks like her, nobody I know acts like her. She has an untrained eighteen year old mind—a lost soul, I remind myself. A jolt of adrenalin throbs through my chest as I watch her refasten the pewter buttons of her open denim shirt from the bottom up. Tomorrow I will deliver her to the Nova Y LS unit. Just not today.
         Tanna pulls a cigarette from the rectangle bulge in her shirt pocket. The orange end she lights glows as she takes a long drag. She laughs and billowy smoke escapes on the warm breeze. “You’re blushing, Remie.”
         I look down as a smile creeps over my lips.
         “But really—don’t you think it’s wrong the government keeps kids away from their parents?” She looks at me intently.
         I stare at the glowing stick in her hand. It came from a pack of cigarettes I know she’d stolen from someplace. “Yeah, but since Nova Youth was implemented twenty-four years ago, crime rates have hit zero in some cities across the country.”
         “Sure they have,” Tanna mumbles and takes another drag off the cigarette. “But what crimes aren’t they reporting anymore?”
         I look up and see a black cloud in the distance over the trees. I nod in its direction. “Nova Youth all started because of the Heaps, you know?”
         Tanna glances in the direction of the thick cloud. “Is that why you’re taking me there? . . . to show me why letting some machine raise kids is better than letting their own moms and pops love them?”
         “Let’s go,” I tell her.
         We walk about a mile down a dirt road until we reach an opening in the trees and a steep hill. Tanna follows behind me, asking questions.
         “I don’t get what was so bad about toys. My mom made me rag dolls when I was small, and I thought they were the greatest ever.”
         “It wasn’t the toys that were bad—it was the people who made them. Terrorist groups started lacing toys with poison, making kids real sick—thousands died. Parents did too.”
         “So that’s why the government ban them?” Tanna gasps as we reach the peak of the hill and gazes out over the valley. She murmurs, “Damn.”
         Acres of twisted, entwining strands of discolored and blackened plastic stretches before our eyes. The wind hisses through the holes in the hardened parts that once had drooped and melted into thick blobs and entwining strands in the heat of the fires twenty-five years ago. The toy wasteland rose up high over the skyline.
          “Here is where the country’s toys ended up.” I lift my hand to my eyes to rove the wasteland known as the Heaps. We move toward the border of the first heap. “Don’t get too close—the fires still burn in the center of the Heaps.”
         “I still don’t understand . . . why Nova Youth—from this?” Tanna kneels down to pick up a tattered doll.
         I exhale and turn toward the second heap and narrow my eyes. “Because people must be trained from infancy to develop morals and social ethics—when kids were attacked by terrorist groups inside our own country, it was the last straw. Parents weren’t trusted anymore to raise good-standing citizens. There were too many criminals in the world, too many terrorists. The government needed to step in and begin training our youth of tomorrow for a better, safer world.” I turn and see something brown on top of a pile of debris. It has a familiar shape—a toy I’d seen before.
         “What did you find?” Tanna asks, breathless as she leaps over debris and finds her way to my side again. “What is that, Remie—a hedgehog toy?”
         “This face--” I touch the plastic toy cupped in my hand. “I loved this face in my--”
         “Infancy?” Tanna tries to look over my shoulder. “Was it one of the images you remember?”
         “No.” I rub my throbbing temple. “It was before . . . I think.” The face of a woman flashes in my mind. My mother. I see concern in her eyes. I shake my head. “I can’t remember. I think I used to call it the Master.”
         “What do you mean, before?” Tanna puts an arm around my slumped shoulders.
         There’s so much I want to tell her, but my trained mind can’t release the words to her. “I was already almost five when I was shipped to Nova Youth,” I manage to say. “I was a mess—very ill.” I don’t mention the nights that followed in Nova Youth of endless sobbing, missing my mother—or how she died before me the night they came for me. I shake my head and look over my shoulder at Tanna’s blank expression.
         “He has the sweetest little face,” she muses with fixed eyes. “I want him.”
         I hold the stiff toy away from her reach. “No, there’s something not right with it.”
         Tanna glowers at me.
         “You can’t have everything you want, Tanna. Besides, I have strict orders to return any marked toys I find.” I point to an “X” slashed in ink on the Master’s hand.
         “Oh, like the way you are supposed to “return” me to the Nova Y unit for Lost Souls?” She turns away.
         I watch the back of her beautiful figure quake with emotion. A gust of wind carries the sweet scent of her to me, followed by the chocking stench of burning plastic from the Heaps. I hurl the toy to the ground, and its head rolls away from its body. The purple eye stares up at me, and I want to spit on it. I turn from Tanna and the Heaps. I walk, heading back down the hill toward the old dirt road.
         “Wait,” Tanna screeches as she runs to catch up to me. “Where are you going?”
         “Back.”
         “Back where?”
         “I’m going back to the unit—my report will state I lost your trail. I’ll request a new assignment.”
         “But what about me? You can’t just leave me all alone.” Tanna’s breath quickened.
         “I’m taking you back to the farm where you will be safe again, and then, I’m going.” The dirt road crunches beneath my boots.
         “Rembrandt, slow down—I can’t walk that fast.”
         I can’t slow down; if I do, I might change my mind, and I can’t change my mind. Behind me, I hear a thud. I turn and see Tanna in a pile on the road. I run to her, lift her head.
         Dirt clings to a surface cut on her forehead. Her eyes glaze, then close.
         “Talk to me, Tanna,” I beg and stroke her blazing, flushed cheek. “What’s wrong?”
         Her glazed eyes open and she murmurs, “I feel like I’m dying inside.”
         “No, you’re just sick or something, honey.” My knees lower and press hard into small rocks on the dirt road beside her limp body. “Can you try and get up—try to walk?”
         One hand stuffed in her pocket, Tanna lets out an agonizing moan. She turns her head to release a crimson stream of vomit.
         Oh my God. I wince and look away.
         Tanna rolls onto her back again, her color changing from pale to flushed again.
         “Tanna, I’ve got to call for some help.”
         “No,” she muttered.
         “It’s going to be okay. I’ll keep you safe—I promise.” I reach into my jacket for my phone and dial 911.

* * *

         Seconds feel like hours as I wait, hovered over Tanna’s shaking body. I scoop her into my arms and kiss her head. I tell her everything will be all right. I tell her I was wrong—I will always take care of her. I imagine us living free and on the run—I come up with a plan to keep her hidden from the Nova Y unit. When help arrives, I’ll say she’s my little sister. My heart leaps—I hear the distant siren. “They’re on their way now.”
         Tanna murmurs something.
         “What is it?” I ask. I’d do anything for her—I know this now.
         Her words slur in a sickly whisper. “I won’t need you anymore . . . in my . . . infancy.” Her fist falls out of her pocket. In it, she gripps the Master toy head I’d thrown on the ground at the Heaps. As the sirens roar nearer, she sits up, scurries away from my frozen arms. In a swoop, she turns back with sunken eyes, one arm raised high, fisting a jagged rock.
         “Tanna . . . no. . . ” The voice of my mother echoes in my distant childhood memory, “Rembrandt, no . . .”

         On this hard, unforgiving grave, I succumb to the pain and to the end. As I close my eyes on that final moment, I hear the siren silence and Tanna say, “Take me now to Nova Youth.”

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This story is an entry in the 2011 second round of

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