It is unnatural not to have a pair. Even God gave Mary a husband. Why must the rest be always afraid of the unnatural?
I think too much, that’s the trouble.
She had these kinds of thoughts whenever she walked. And she loved to walk.
Humans – what a strange, delusional bunch they are to think that the “unexamined life is not worth living”, yet remain unaware of their own strangeness.
The village idiot crossed her path. He was carrying a sack, singing a lost tune from a decade unfamiliar to most people.
He’s singing Odetta!
She stopped to listen, but did not look.
I wonder if awareness of their strangeness drives them mad.
She started on her path again.
The supermarket must be full of human beings again today. The normal ones can get annoying sometimes.
She lit a cigarette – something that she learned to do a few months after having given birth to a girl. It’s been five months now. She enjoys the habit.
No, the normal ones can get annoying a lot of times. They think they have everything figured out.
“Hi!”
She looked up to see her neighbor, the lady who spread the rumors.
Or everyone, for that matter.
“Hi,” she quipped back as best as she could.
“Where are you off to?”
What do you care.
“Supermarket,” she said instead.
“Meat prices have gone down, you know, you should hurry before they run out,” said the annoying neighbor, wearing her
perpetually perfunctory looking smile. That must work for her. Whatever works, then.
“Okay.”
“How’s your daughter?” said the neighbor.
Now she looks more sinister.
“At home.”
“So who’s looking after her? Your mother come to visit?” asked the neighbor, who was pretty much the source of the town’s news. Many in the town agree that she works harder than the local paper.
She knew that she had strict orders to assimilate as subtly as she could, but even in her home base, she was the odd one; which was perhaps why she was sent in to watch the humans – they thought she could assimilate more easily.
I told them, again and again, it’s all the fucking same even in this bizarre body.
She knew she had strict orders not to give anything away. Then again, it was always interesting to be a visitor. The novelty of the first leg of each visit was always inviting. The briefings, the transfer, the planning, and most of all the curiosity and the finding out. Her problem was that it wore off faster than it did for others. The state of discontent. The something’s-always-wrong, the something’s-always-better-out-there that she always kept searching for.
And so now, she knew she had to pack up as soon as she got home, because today, she couldn’t help it:
“She can take care of herself. She makes her own food; she has come to like vegetables like I do, so I don’t really care about the meat prices today. She’s a very independent little thing; leaving her alone in the house isn’t a problem for me, unlike you humans who need company and care in the early stages of life. Her needs are different and I can provide for them efficiently.
“And it would have been a wonderful thing to stay longer and watch her live carrying my last name, unlike your womenfolk who disappear into a middle initial after marriage. But as is the case, I think will have to leave you with nothing else to talk about.
“But come to think of it, if you realize how creative your kind is, you could write stories about me. Try it. I’ll read them from home base. When you get reborn, maybe I’ll visit you. I hope you don’t come back as a cockroach, though, because you might.”
She went, feeling much lighter. I think I’ll get cabbages for Hari today.
