Rhetta did her best not to cry, parked there in the employee lot, gripping the printed notice with her two weeks’ severance, blurred by threatening tears. Last month her boss had let on that she was up for a promotion. A lie. She had a feeling it was a lie and then the plant shut down that morning. Already, rumors of management and high-seniority workers accepting transfers to the shiny new factory in New Mexico.

Rhetta’s employment spanned six and a half months. The pay was okay, the work wasn’t hard and the plant had stood in their small Tennessee town before she was born. She’d scored big getting that job days after her high school graduation. Now she had nothing.

The drive home was a blank never recovered. She banged open the screen door coming inside and right away her mom called from the living room, “You’re early! Something happen?”

“They fired us. Closed the plant.”

Rhetta thumped her purse on the kitchen table and her mother appeared in the doorway. “They said they weren’t going to close.”

“Just lies to keep us working.” Rhetta opened the fridge, saw nothing she wanted.

“They’re hiring at the new place in town,” Mom’s boyfriend, Daryl, offered from his sofa perch in the living room.

“Would you try to get along?” her mother added quietly after catching the twitch of contempt sneaking across the corners of Rhetta’s eyes.

“What place?” Rhetta called back through the doorway without making a move to leave the kitchen. She knew Daryl sat on the sofa out there in the adjoining living room, with his stinking discolored socks over his yellowed fungus toenails, feet propped on the battered coffee table.

“Someone bought that boarded-up bar and they’re ‘bout done with the remodel. Rosebud, they call it. Had a sign up looking for wait staff. Ain’t that right, Jean?”

Her mother nodded. “He’s being nice,” she whispered.

Rhetta had waitressed the summer before senior year and didn’t much care for it. On her feet all the time. Hot. Fussy customers. Reluctant, but willing to get clear from Daryl and Mom pestering her, she called the bar and they invited her for an interview the next day. With her newest blouse, green and stitched with vine patterns, and her newest jeans, no visible wear, she marched up to the Rosebud’s rear entrance and stopped short.

WAITRESSES + KITCHEN STAFF WANTED

Lettered smaller below:

BIKINI REQUIRED FOR WAITRESSES

Rhetta spun on her heels, marched right back to her car. She’d have squealed her tires then and there peeling out of the parking lot if her treads weren’t already shy of bald. Damn it, Daryl. It’s not like he didn’t think she was too fat for a job like that. Was he plain stupid or mean with a pleasant demeanor? Either way or both, she didn’t like him. And shit like this was why. Hadn’t her mother read the sign? She’d have probably read it like her texts, just the first line.

She had to get out of her mother’s house. Her old job was supposed to be the yellow brick road to her own apartment. Well, with a roomie, but still. Now she’d still be stuck at home. With Daryl. He didn’t live there but he may as well since he roosted on that sofa nearly every day.

Chelle, her watch, announced, “Grace is calling, and flagged as important.”

She pulled off the highway onto the gravel shoulder and parked. “Gracie!” Rhetta shouted as a greeting. “Been too long!”

“Rhetta! I know it. But I heard you got canned along with the rest of ‘em.”

“It’s bad. Used my last fumes of gas to look at a help wanted sign that don’t want me.”

“That’s rough, girl. And why I called you up. You know what I’ve been doin’ lately?”

Rhetta heard things, like medical experiments or something. “I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch.”

“Don’t you fret. I’ve been pregnant.”

“Oh my God! Congratulations!”

Grace laughed. “It’s not like that. It’s how I make money.”

Two weeks later, Rhetta drove the hour to the Nashville lab that Gracie had proudly vaunted in their catch-up. Institutional, buffed-off white and sterile like a doctor’s office. They took blood, a big donut-looking machine examined her innards, she walked on a treadmill for ten really long minutes with wires stuck to her head and chest.

After an hour in the waiting room with other women all looking a little poor and a lot bored, they called her back in, sat her at a metal desk and slid across a stack of paperwork bigger than when her mom cosigned her car. The offered figure, there in ink at the bottom of the heap, made her giddy. But things too good to be true usually aren’t true at all, according to her mother. She was usually right. But here it was, in writing. Still… Rhetta paused, afraid of getting into something she really didn’t want. But again, she was so close to blowing a tire, and she couldn’t afford that. She wanted her own apartment, away from Daryl. The monthly stipend was more than enough. And there were no other opportunities in town. Everything bad in her life could change in this moment, it seemed. She really wanted change. It's all really routine, they explained. Required for all the participants. We just need you to give your name here and here and we can get started. So she did. 

A week later she returned for the embryo transfer. In a different exam room, a med tech instructed her to strip down newborn-naked and slip into a flimsy gown thing and sit on the padded exam table. As she changed, she dreamt again of what she could do with the money. If today went well they’d transfer the first part of the cash, plus her mileage for driving from home and back.

Cold, nervous, and wondering again if she’d been a touch hasty about all this, Rhetta jumped when the doctor walked in. “Ms. Rhetta? I’ll need you to lie on your back, place your feet as close to your rear as you can, knees to the ceiling.”

“All right.” Rhetta reclined and then stopped before lifting her knees, propping on her elbows. The position as directed, would have her hoo-ha shine right at this doctor. This wasn’t even her pediatrician who she hadn’t seen since she was but fourteen. Rhetta didn’t want to be a bother, but at this, she balked. “Um…could we have a nurse in here? A woman nurse?”

“Okay.” The doctor’s face fell from almost-friendly to almost-annoyed. “Might be a bit, everyone’s busy.”

Straightening up to a seated position, Rhetta folded her hands in her lap. “Please?”

At home, then, after the procedure. Rhetta’s mom on the other side of her bedroom door: “Can I come in?” The TV noise grew louder as her mother entered, and quieted as she closed the door behind her. “We have to have a little talk.”

Rhetta, reclined on the twin bed, dimmed her watch, which had been projecting text from a book she’d been enjoying. She sat up, feet to the floor so her Mom could sit beside.

“Baby, I’ll get right to it. It’s been a month since they closed the plant and you haven’t once asked for money. And you still don’t have a job.”

Rhetta sighed. “Don’t be mad.”

“Now I know I’m gonna be mad.”

“Maybe, maybe not.” Rhetta told Chelle to show her mother the brochure. She watched her Mom’s eyes darted to and fro, fingers flipping across the floating pages her watch projected there in the small space above her mattress. Mom’s face evolved, slowly, from concerned, to worried, and then all the way to open-mouthed horror.

She turned to Rhetta and whisper-hissed, “You’re pregnant?”

Rhetta nodded. “But not like—”

“You’re ruining your body at this young age?”

So, that was her primary concern. “It’s for science and the pay—”

“No pay, no pay, baby, is worth you having a saggy, scarred-up tummy at the age of eighteen! And you won’t even have a little heaven-sent to carry around as an excuse! You sure stretched me out.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“And what will people think when you start showing?”

“Remember Grace? She does this!”

“No!” Mom flipped her hand, dismissively.

“She does, Mom, and she’s the one that got me hooked up with the lab.”

“Well, that’s probably why we never see her face anywhere isn’t it?”

“Well, judgy busybodies like you make life hard on people when you should mind ya business.”

Her mother sighed dramatically. “We all have to get along, baby. This ain’t no big city. People see you at the market and everywhere. Grace might not have any friends left. Do you want to end up like that?”

“I don’t want friends that throw me to the woods because they don’t like how I’m trying to make ends meet.”

The both of them sat there, pensively. Rhetta, picking at a dry cuticle. Her mom, biting her lip, looking at the floor beside the bed. Then, “So, when’s this piglet of yours due?”

“There’s three hybrid fetuses in me.”

“Three? Three as in triplets?” 

The TV volume lowered in the living room.

Rhetta shook her head and whispered, “And now Daryl’s eavesdropping.”

Her mother flipped her brassy-dyed bangs from her eyes and huffed. Rhetta was thankful for nosy Daryl for the first time in her life. Otherwise her mom’s volume and pitch would have continued upward until only dogs could hear her judgment.

“I know, you’re all grown up,” her mom continued whispering, “but this is the worst-ever decision. The worst!”

Rhetta whispered back, “Well I can’t back out of it now, they’d take back all the money.”

“Not a concern. Not if we drive you north—we could still save your tummy.”

Now Rhetta’s mouth fell open. Her mother, her church-every-other-Sunday mother, just suggested she flee the state for an abortion.

“Don’t look at me like that. It said right there in the brochure those babies are half pigs. With a pig brain and a pig soul, I reckon. It’d be like putting three dogs down. Not a sin.”

“Mom, look. See right here on page five where it says ‘priority one’? They put your name on a list. No one in the whole U-S-of-A would give me an abortion.”

Standing and throwing her hands in the air, her mother strode to the door, and then turned back and hissed, still mindful of the spying ears in the living room, “I don’t even know you anymore.” She took a breath, faked a smile for Daryl, and left Rhetta alone.

Rhetta supposed that Hunter looked as cute as his dating app photo, with his mousy-brown hair trimmed tight and his green eyes like tiny, shiny lily-pads. At least one of them looked like their profile. She hated her round face and always asked Chelle to slim it down a little for her in her pictures. But Hunter looked just as advertised. 

Daryl, on the other hand, had sure set the bar low for what anyone would expect from dating. Just a few weeks back he’d asked why she wasn’t working at the new bar. Rhetta had rolled her eyes and muttered the word “bikinis,” to which Daryl replied, “They got a couple of chunky girls in there!” Rhetta screamed unintelligible curses and retreated to her bedroom.

She’d asked her mother why oh why she stayed with him, and got the depressing reply, “I’m an old maid. Pickins are slim. Daryl keeps his job and doesn’t break things when he gets mad.” Rhetta remembered their plastic dinnerware when her father was still around.

Seated across from this Hunter fellow, there at The Catfish Shack (Rhetta’s favorite in town), she asked him to tell her about this ranch job of his that he’d mentioned casually before meeting up. 

“Yeah, I really can’t. I signed an NDA and I’d be fired if I breathed a word.”

“A what?”

Hunter had just taken a bite of catfish and finished chewing before continuing. “A non-disclosure agreement. I can’t tell anyone what goes on there.”

Rhetta allowed her fork to clatter to her plate. “What kind of line are you handing me?”

“It’s in my profile. I work on the hybrid ranch.”

“The—” Shit. She froze. Did she miss that part? “You mean the human-pig hybrids.”

Hunter nodded. “Remember that stink a few years back when Tennessee loaned them a hundred acres of Fall Creek Falls State Park? Less trees. Land subsidies and tax breaks for startup businesses. People need jobs.”

“Yeah, and we need trees, too. Can’t breathe much without ‘em.”

“They left a lot of them. They hold up a screening canopy over the campus. Can’t fly a plane or a drone over for a peek. Gives a bit of shade, too, which is nice.”

“So why are they so secretive about it?”

“Some people won’t understand, I guess.” Hunter stirred his coleslaw uncomfortably. “People don’t really want to know what goes on at the slaughterhouses, either.” He stopped stirring to look at her with a small grin. “How about we talk about what movies we like?”

Rhetta liked his smile. She’d been grilling the poor guy without realizing it. It wasn’t like she was going to say anything about the hybrids in her womb on the first date.

“All right, then.” She smiled back.

They parted ways after dinner. Rhetta told him she’d like to see him again.

As she relaxed in her bed, Rhetta made inquiries with Chelle. She found the company line on the hybrids and read it aloud. “Once born, the stock is cared for by attentive staff and given the highest standards of nutrition and ample room to roam and exercise, ensuring optimum development.”

Clear as mud.

“Go deep, Chelle. Bring me pictures of the Fall Creek Falls ranch. Of baby hybrids. Of toddlers and children.”

“They are not referred to as children.”

Rhetta grunted in frustration. “Of young stock or lab specimens, then, I reckon.”

The first few images that Chelle pulled up were the ones she had been shown at the lab. Every woman wanted to know what would be growing inside them. Every juvenile “specimen” looked like a regular baby, but with some differences. Each had random dark splotches, like those on a pig. They all were bald except for a layer of pig fuzz all over their body. No human hair sprouted from their heads. Blowing up the photos she noted the fingers looked shorter than any real child’s. They all had rounder eyes and flatter noses a bit upturned, but really nothing like a pig’s. The ears lacked folds, the helixes of the upper auricle completely missing.

“I’ve seen these already, Chelle,” Rhetta complained. “These are like they had their pictures done up at the Walmart. Get me some of them out on the ranch.”

“Searching…”

Several photos propagated, all shot from a considerable distance. Children running on a green field. Blowing them up she could barely discern any features on the hybrids at all. Tiny, pixelated blurs.

“Chelle, you’re disappointing tonight.”

“I’ve found more, but they’re all flagged as ‘doctored’ or ‘AI generated.’ Many have been deleted under threat of lawsuit.”

“That’s no good.” And a little suspicious, she thought. “Just give me something to look at while you’re looking.”

“I’m certain you’ll find them disturbing.”

Rhetta sighed. “Just let me see.”

The first image popped the air before her, eclipsing the foot of her bed. Rhetta swiped it away and shouted, “Good God Almighty!”

“My warning was clear.”

“Let me catch my breath. Oh my God.”

The photo, viewed for perhaps the majority of a second, had already burned itself into Rhetta’s  brain. Half a dozen spotted babies lined up on their sides, tiny ears flat. all suckling the teats of a large sow in repose.

“That was a fake, right, Chelle?”

“Everywhere I find this photograph it is flagged as fake.”

“But is it?”

“Uncertain.”

Rhetta patted her chest. “What else you find?”

A video began in mud, someone walking with a camera pointed at the ground, black rubber boots sucking at the wet earth. A background noise grew louder: a cacophony of breathing, chewing, grunting punctuated by the occasional high-pitched cry. The boots stopped. The camera shot up in a swift motion to show a dozen hybrids huddled around a trough. Filthy, dirt-encrusted from feet to crowns, all. Some dug into the feed with their hands, others stuck their heads in, eating directly. Bloody scratches and cuts striped their heads and arms. One approached from the right with a weird, awkward limp and tried to squeeze in. Two others knocked him sprawling in the mud. He sat up, eyes squeezed shut and wailed and flailed his crooked arms, the sound a chilling aggregate of a child’s cry and a pig’s squeal.

The video blacked and disappeared, darkening her bedspace.

Rhetta started breathing again. Her heart hammered, blood thrumming in her ears. She wanted to sweep up that filthy. distorted little child in the mud and take him home and give him a bath and some decent food. And a bed with blankets.

“That wasn’t real, right?”

“Checking… The file is no longer streamable. Strange. It seems the DRM permissions encoded for that video have changed by the host just now, preventing me from projecting what’s left in my buffer. This could imply that the subject matter was privileged and may have been real.”

Rhetta’s hand went down to her belly. In the dark, she could still sort of see what she had seen in her retinal afterimage. These poor, poor little things. What had she done?

She hesitated to go out with Hunter the next week, with those images Chelle found about the ranch still burning in her mind’s eye. But then, would she not date someone who worked at a slaughterhouse, too? She liked meat, ate meat. Wouldn’t that make her hypocritical? 

So, she agreed to go to dinner with him again, and their date went well enough, if a little fun. Enough for Rhetta to get out of her head and into the here and now. There in the space between them at the checker-clothed picnic table, amidst their baskets of hot chicken and red plastic cups beneath the market lights, they took turns projecting images of their lives from their watches. From his, a topograph of the country road leading up to his modest ranch house, which she traced with her index finger. From Chelle, a series of point-cloud playbacks of Rhetta with her friends from her high school days, passing hallway lockers that leaned up against the napkin dispenser there on the table. 

After, when he invited her to go camping with him, she said yes. She wasn’t fond of camping, and certainly not the hiking that preceded the kind of camping he liked. But she’d signed on because she liked his smile, his gentle ways, his manners. And the way he kissed.

The hike wasn’t so bad, though, and what made it better, Hunter brought some pulled pork in foil to heat up over their campfire. Rhetta found making love outside under the stars was extremely overrated and vowed then and there to never repeat the performance. The sleeping bags and pads stacked to soften the endeavor did their job well enough. But gnats attacked from above. And chiggers from below.

Inside the tent, as Rhetta applied copious amounts of Chigg Away lotion to quell the fierce itches in embarrassing places, she cried, “Oh my God! I hate nature!”

Hunter, doing his best to not scratch his own accumulation of itchy wounds, laughed. “Guess we should’ve Netflixed and chilled.”

“One of them chiggers made his home in my crack!”

“I’m a little jealous.”

“Perv.”

 Hunter dug in his backpack and produced a joint. “This might help us relax some.”

Rhetta’s eyes popped wide as the lighter sparked in the moonlit tent. “Put that out!” she shouted. “I can’t be around that ‘cause of the babies!”

Hunter spun about, unzipped the tent door, reached outside, and smothered the joint in the dirt as he coughed his toke. He pulled himself back in, zipping up the barrier between them and the gnats. His eyes, like hers, had grown wide, but with questions. He placed the joint in the backpack. “So…what did you mean?’

Rhetta had stopped scratching, awash in adrenalin after her regrettable outburst. Patting her belly, she moved to explain. “I was gonna tell you. No one knows but my mom. I signed up to carry hybrid babies.” She patted her belly.

“Good Lord, Rhetta,” he muttered, putting it all together after a dim, thoughtful moment passed between them, there in the tent. "Why'd you go and do a thing like that?”

“Why d’ya think?” She ticked off the list on her fingers. “The money. And also for the money. And because it’s good money.”

“This is a lot, Rhetta.”

“Why? You work with them every day!”

“Not inside me! I didn’t mix my genes with pigs to make new ones!”

“What in Sam Hill are you goin’ on about? They’re not made from my genes.”

“They had to have told you.” Hunter leaned against his pillow, looking up at the tent fabric now, at the camp light, at the framing. At anything other than her.

“Told me what? And quit your yelling.”

“Fine.” Hunter sighed. “Sorry. But they’d have told you they use the mother’s genes in making the embryos.” He pointed at her belly. “They have to. There’s less risk of your body rejecting them if they’re from you.” 

Rhetta sat in silence but for the frogs and crickets singing and the lonely call of the whippoorwill filling the night. “They didn’t tell me that.”

“I’m sure it was in that knee-high stack of paperwork.”

“How do you know all this?”

“The training. It’s a couple weeks long.” After a few moments of listening to the fauna of the night forest, Hunter whispered, “And it’s all true. Hell. Maybe it's all right if they fire me. Tell who you want. The young’uns are treated as bad as pigs to the slaughter. Used to give me nightmares. Don’t anymore, but sometimes I can’t sleep. They give me pills now. Maybe I'll sleep okay if they fire me. Or maybe not. I might be ruined for good for working there.”

“Now none of us gonna sleep.”

“They bite each other so bad some get stitches. Some mash their little faces in the dirt until they get all bloody and lips all swole up. They told us they don’t got no natural history and some will root in the mud like a pig but they don’t have the face or nose for it. They’re born all mixed up, not knowing what they are. They say their bones and muscles won’t grow right if they’re caged up all day, so they stay out in the pens, making a racket all day and night.”

Rhetta listened to the thrum of the crickets. A chill breezed into the tent, raising gooseflesh. She couldn’t hide from what grew within her. Or their cruel destiny.

Rhetta sat in her bedroom as her mother and Daryl blared the television in the living room. She hated so much that her mother was right about something. Anything. But even if her mom’s reasoning was as screwed up as a screen door on a submarine, she was still right.

“Tell Mom to come in here for a sec,” Rhetta told Chelle.

After a moment, her mother quietly knocked and entered. She saw her daughter’s distressed expression and sat beside her. “What’s wrong, baby?”

“I need to get rid of these things.” She pointed to her belly.

Her mother cleared her throat loudly and said, “You can’t. No one will do it. Contract and all.” She made a cutting motion across her throat and pointed to Rhetta’s watch.

Rhetta looked perplexed, and started, “But—”

Pressing her finger against Rhetta’s lips, and held out her hand, indicating Chelle.

After shooting her an exasperated look, Rhetta handed it to her mother, who strode across the hall to the bathroom, turned on the shower and returned. “I bet they listen through that thing!” Jean hissed.

“You’re paranoid!”

“They got that health app in there listening to your heart, your breathing, as sure as sunshine they listen!”

“All watches do that, mom. That’s just standard.”

Jean sighed as she sat beside her daughter. “You sure about this, baby? Mind telling me about your change of heart?”

“I either keep these for myself and love them or I get rid of them while they’re sleeping in me. They’re cruel to them, Mom. Just terrible. And that’s just at the ranch. Lord knows what they put them through when they sell them to labs. Hunter told me they come out not knowing their ass from their elbow. They think they’re pigs, but they got arms and legs but no trotters and…it’s just a mess, Mom.” Rhetta wiped a tear. She couldn’t tell if she were more mad or sad or scared. 

“Well, let’s take Daryl’s truck.”

“It’s ten at night! Where we going? And my car’s fine, new tires and all!”

But Jean was nodding her head now, as if agreeing with the shape of how she saw things would play out. “Get your things together, put Chelle back on so they don’t get suspicious. We’re leaving right now and you let me do all the talking to Daryl.”

“Don’t you be tellin’ him nothing!”

“Your mother was born at night, but not last night” She shot up from the bed and left.

Rhetta picked up her jacket and purse, Chelle back on her wrist. 

In the living room her mother jangled the keys in her hand. “We need to run out for some tampons,” her mother told Daryl.

“So many you need the truck?”

“Mind your business,” Jean said as she headed out the door.

“That truck is my business! I pay the note on it!”

Jean strode to him, hands on hips. “You eat my food and crawl into my bed. You can find somewhere else to put your feet up evenin’s if you’re gonna be a dog turd about every little thing.”

Daryl blinked. He didn’t rise from his perch for a yelling match. “Fine, then. You don’t have to have a hissy about it.”

Rhetta gave Daryl a stare as she barged through the front door. The two of them backed the truck out of the drive as Rhetta fumbled with her seatbelt. “Where are we headed?”

Jean touched the truck’s display for the map, scrolled out and pointed to Canada.

Rheta’s jaw dropped. Didn’t they need passports? Her mother was being extreme. She didn’t expect to be heading to a whole new country. Rhetta looked down at her jeans, one of her more tattered varieties. A small ketchup blot marred her shirt. She’d rather have on better clothes for such an international trip.

“It’s getting late and your heart rate is elevated,” said Chelle. “You should rest soon. Remember, eight hours of sleep per night.”

Rhetta knew Chelle was right, but she couldn’t sleep. Usually, Rhetta fell fast asleep on highway rides. Not tonight. The craziness of the night, of the past month, wouldn’t allow it. But in order to calm the intrusive Chelle, she tried taking in slow, deep breaths, a calming technique from her health class in high school.

It helped. She at least relaxed. Some. 

After an hour of driving north on the freeway, Chelle piped up, “You are approaching the state line. Just as a reminder, no permission for travel has been issued.”

Her mother looked to her, trepidation written in the lines of her forehead. She offered a tense smile of reassurance. Rhetta suppressed the urge to throw Chelle out the window, since that would ring alarm bells somewhere, too.

Her mother shook her head, alternately lit and dark by the passing streetlamps. “Aw hell, Daryl,” muttered Jean.

“What’d he do now?”

“Tank’s on empty already. There’s a Charge’nGas up yonder. And I got about ten dollars to my name.”

“I can fill it.” Fatigue had her in its embrace, but stress pried her eyes open. A little past midnight Jean pulled into a well-lit energy station. 

The passenger side door hollered on its hinges. “Baby, can you get us some jerky?” her mom called out to her from the driver’s side window as Rhetta shuffled towards the white light of the store, out past the pumps. “And Monsters? And top us off while we’re here.”

Rhetta laid out some cash for pump number three for the attendant and headed to the bathroom. She was pleasantly surprised to find it clean and bright. Now sleep called to her. Maybe she could get a little shut-eye on the next stretch.

It hit her as she washed her hands that she’d have to pay back every spent penny. How? Well, Mom was gonna get the cheapest jerky. And no-brand energy drinks.

Rhetta perused the overpriced offerings in the snack aisle. “It sounds like you are considering beef jerky. May I suggest the healthy zero-sugar protein bars?” said Chelle. Rhetta slapped her palm over Chelle, suddenly very concerned now with how her watch might be monitoring her. Should she check the settings? Would Chelle react to her opening those preferences? Sorry for how she’d dismissed her mother’s concern earlier, she picked up a granola bar and a peanut butter protein bar with no added sugar. 

Flashing lights over the shelf through the wall of glass. She looked up and saw there at the pumps, the red and blue flashing lights of a police cruiser parking diagonally in front of Daryl’s truck. Panic rose in her throat. She wanted to scream, to run, maybe sneak out the back. Another cruiser pulled up, tires squeaking as it stopped behind the pickup, boxing it in. The clerk scratched his neck nervously, gazing out the window at the trouble brewing.

Rhetta pushed through the glass door and stopped to watch her Mother, gesticulating from the driver’s side window at the cops shouting, hands reaching to their holsters. Rhetta’s feet itched to run off in a panic and hide. But she couldn’t. There was no abandoning her mother. Jean was roughly pulled from the truck and slammed against the hood, her hands twisted behind her back for the cuffs. Her eyes locked onto Rhetta’s, frozen in the doorway of the station. Jean jerked her head, a tiny motion for Rhetta to run for it. Still looking out for her.

As she unfroze and found the courage to run and go, two cops spotted her and came running.

It was all over.

Tubed auto-pumps drew milk from Rhetta’s nipples. Fatty, pale-yellow in color, the milk traced the clear tube lines up and away from her chest in an arc towards a panel on the side of the pump unit hanging from a chain. Every now and then, a short spilling sound as if something top-heavy tipped liquid into a plastic bucket before righting itself again. 

Her hybrids, born three weeks past, were somewhere. Calling them babies was discouraged, but her breasts were always sore now. Wherever the three little ones were, she could feel how they were no longer with her. Within her. Maybe curled up sucking a sow’s teat? As soon as they could toddle they would be turned out to the ranch pens. How could she still hear them, even now over the thrum of the pumping machines?

But today wasn’t too bad. The pink sofa in the common area of the Mothers’ Dormitory was comfortable, at least. The memory of giving birth was a dim, blurry fugue of medical efficiency that had happened somewhere in the building. Down the hall in the other wing? Now she sulked, here in recuperation, with the gaily-colored walls and furniture that the moms called the milking room.

“Hey stranger!”

She looked up to see Grace, a stretch older than she’d last seen her: dark circles beneath her eyes, face a touch gaunt. Her belly looked fit to pop. But she smiled and her voice was sing-songy as always. “Feeding them little ones, huh?” Grace asked.

“I reckon.”

“I came in for my checkup and a little bird told me I’d find you in here.” With a significant, inelegant effort Grace sat beside her with a grunt. “Oof. They filled me with four this time. The back braces sure help.”

“Goodness.” Rhetta didn’t feel like talking. But she didn’t want to be rude.

“I know you got cold feet your first time around, but you thinkin’ of carrying more?”

Rhetta shook her head. “Not sure it’s for me.”

“Well, darlin’, I’ve chosen this profession for the mean-while. Like everything, there’s good days and bad. But the paydays are never bad.” She patted Rhetta on the knee. “Look, I’ll tell you true. I got a commission when your transfer was successful. And I’ll get another if you go again.” She leaned in, voice low. “They told me they’ll wipe the slate clean if you go another round. No debts on money owed, all good. At least give yourself a start, one more time, then quit. Otherwise you’ll be working some job paying them a big chunk every week.”

“I’ll give it some thought.”

“You do that. Now, someone told me you have a boyfriend!”

“Don’t know why he hangs around. I’m always feelin’ lower than a snake’s belly, not good company.”

“Well, then, he must love you. And if you ditch that debt, you’ll feel a lot better about everything. Trust me.” Grace struggled to rise. “Lord! I wish today was the day.”

After goodbyes, Grace left the Mothers’ Dormitory.

Rhetta noticed that she’d reached the amount of milk necessary to turn off the machine. Relieved, she disconnected, cleaned up, dropped the suction cups in the bin and stood at the window that faced the woods. The rain looked like it would never stop. Maybe she’d call her mother. She might like the news that there was a quicker way out from the debt.

She felt hollow, used. Empty. What would her babies get up to? She tried to push that thought away, but it wormed into her brainpan. Her mind, against her effort, turned toward her babies’ future, all grown up. And not away at college. Did they let them grow up? Adults with pig brains? Would they be out in a muddy pen, fighting, biting, shitting in the mud? Rhetta shuddered.

A white-uniformed staff member with a practiced smile sat down a fragrant plate on a nearby table.

“The food is hot and delicious,” chirped Chelle. “Let’s get your weight back up.”

Rhetta looked to the dish of smothered pork chops.

She shook her head and turned to stare out the window.