Sheep and Wolves by Jeremy C. Shipp Page A

are.
    “You’re going to pay for that,” I say.
    “With what?” he says, and laughs again.
    The answer’s obviously pain, because what else could it be here? Still, I don’t tell him. If he wants my help, he can stop laughing at me.
    Rea takes a break from her throaty mumbling. She says, “You still haven’t told us why you’re here. What did you do?”
    “I didn’t do anything,” Lucian says.
    “Of course you did,” she says. “Maybe you don’t know what you did, but you did something.”
    “No. Jesus. You don’t understand. I’m not one of you. I have a soul.”
    Now it’s my turn to laugh.
    *
    I remember the fields of my childhood because I still own my memories. For now.
    For now I remember my father’s dirty hands and the way he’d chase after me, declaring himself a zombie farmer each and every time, as if I’d somehow forget the game. I would escape the fields into our home and the moment I stepped through that threshold, I was safe. As soon as the killer zombie walked through the doorway, he was my father again. And my mother, she would call me her Little Dinner Bell. Then we would eat.
    Once I spied on my father during one of his secret meetings in the barn. I couldn’t hear what he said to those dozen or so people, but the force of his words and gestures frightened me. They wounded me, much more than the slap across the face after he discovered me outside. It wasn’t difficult to find me. After the meeting ended, I just sat there by my peephole, shaking and needing to cry.
    Later that night, I wandered in the dark, into the fields, and pissed on as many vegetables as I could. I thought about all those people swallowing their meals, the residue of this night invading their bodies. It wouldn’t matter how much they washed the greens beforehand. It’s never enough.
    The next day my father apologized. Then he told me something ridiculous like, “When I slapped you, Terrance, I was really slapping myself.” He also told me, “I hate myself for bringing you into this world. You’re too good for all this. I’ll try to make things better.”
    Maybe he did. Just not for me.
    I remember the fields of my childhood because I don’t want to watch the grinning faces outside.
    I can’t look down to see the machines carving up the nub that was once my left leg, but I know they are. I know the blades excrete a trail of bright green ooze in their wake. I know I won’t bleed. And I know that I’ll wave goodbye to that piece of me when it leaves, and I’ll smile, because I’m supposed to enjoy this.
    *
    “I heard something interesting this morning,” Rea says.
    “Oh yeah, where?” Lucian says. “The news?” He snorts.
    “I heard it from some teenagers talking on the street. You can learn a lot about the world if you just listen.”
    Lucian scoffs a scoff that probably means, “Why should I listen to them if they won’t listen to me?”
    “Anyway,” Rea says. “I heard there’s an organization called HARM that’s been freeing people like us all over the country. I don’t know what HARM stands for.”
    “So what?” Lucian says. “You think they’re going to free us?”
    “They probably won’t,” she says. “I just thought it was interesting. That’s all.”
    “Right.”
    I hate the way he talks to her. It’s as if he doesn’t see the power erupting from her eyes. It’s as if he’s not afraid.
    I am. It’s the force of her words and gestures. They wound me like a memory.
    “It had to be a computer error,” Lucian says. “They’ll figure it out soon. When they set me free, there’ll be hell to pay.”
    I was freed once.
    I was freed from the orphanage with all the other soulless children. You see, God would never kill both parents of a child with a soul. He would never allow real children to live seven to a room. He would never allow the beatings or words like Little Fuckers to violate their ears.
    Father Sherman, he blessed me once with his metal switch, and from