For the first sixty miles, Anton couldn’t see or hear much of anything. He was in shock and completely disoriented. His bruised head throbbed in rhythm with the vibrations of the wheels on asphalt. The ‘guards’—the two teenage girls in the back of the vehicle with him—remained mostly silent. It sounded like one of the girls was chewing gum and occasionally blowing bubbles.

He slouched in the back seat, wrists bound, a thick cloth stretched tight across his mouth, a hood over his head. His mind reeled with questions he could not voice. Where are we going? Why am I here? He had done nothing wrong. One moment he had been walking home from a date, the next he was grabbed, hit with a baseball bat, hooded, and thrown into this van like some kind of outlaw. But he wasn’t an outlaw. He was just Anton Childress, the President of Waxahachie Plastics Incorporated – a booming Dallas area business.

It wasn’t until they’d been driving for over an hour that Anton finally heard the girls speak. Mousy teenage voices, whispering, giggling. His ears strained toward their conversation, desperate for any scrap of context, any hint of explanation.

They didn’t seem to be afraid of him. They were just... gossiping. One of them had a high voice and a shrill little laugh. She called the other one Bridget. And the slower one—Morgan, he gathered—kept referring to him as “the man.” Or worse: “evil guy.”

"Evil guy?" he thought. What the hell did I do?

Anton had no answers, only more confusion. All he’d done was live his life. He had paid top dollar to stay at a luxury resort and meet nice girls. And this is how he was being treated? Now he was a prisoner of a gang of ladies in matching jumpsuits, driving him through the dried up swampland once known as Louisiana.

Anton had been dragged away from the Sun Dog, an exclusive resort walled off from the outside world. Beyond the ten-foot walls and razor wire lay nothing but brittle shrub spines and coyote carcasses. This was barely even America anymore. Why drag him out here? Were they going to kill him?

He clenched his jaw and let out a muffled wail. It was all he had. The sound was swallowed by the rumble of the van, but it reached the girls—just barely.

To his surprise, the hood quickly came off. One of the girls—Bridget—was staring at him with curious detachment, like he was a wax sculpture.

“What did you say?” she asked.

“Bridget,” Morgan hissed, “you’re not supposed to talk to him.”

But it was too late.

Bridget rolled her eyes and smacked her gum. “Maybe he’s dying or something.”

“He’s not dying. He’s just complaining.”

Then Morgan added, “How many more of these old dickheads do we have to drag through the desert? Why can’t we just bomb the Sun Dog and be done with it?”

Their conversation continued, an unfiltered stream of petty complaints and judgments. Anton caught fragments: “grabbing men from the resort,” “judgment,” “he deserved it,” “stop telling us what to do.”

Anton shifted in his restraints and began to groan again, louder this time. He kicked his heel against the metal floor, let out another desperate moan.

Eventually, Morgan sighed and twisted around. “God, just shut the hell up.”

She reached over and loosened the gag. It dropped damp and limp to his collar.

“What is your problem?” she asked. “Do you need to piss? We aren’t stopping. We can’t even talk to the driver. But don’t wet yourself, ok? We’ll have to clean it up.”

Anton blinked, his throat raw. His voice cracked with fury and disbelief. The brain fog was turning into indignant rage.

“What’s my problem?” he rasped. “You’ve got me tied up and kidnapped me.”

Morgan shrugged, as if this were no more concerning than a spilled coffee.

Bridget snapped. “What did I say, Morgan? I told you not to take the goddamn gag off. We were clearly instructed not to talk to this guy, not to touch his hood, or his bindings, or anything. Now you’ve got him talking. You realize we’ve got like two more hours in this van with him, right? Seriously, they’re gonna kill us for this.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll put it back.”

Anton leaned forward, his voice raw and hoarse. “Wait. Wait. Just tell me what’s happening. Please. I didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t know what you want from me. I’ll pay you anything—just take me back to the resort and I won’t say a word. I swear.”

The girls stared at him. Their faces were blank, unreadable.

Finally, Morgan replied, “You’re not going back to the resort, you old freak.”

“Why not?” Anton asked, confused and angry.

Morgan rolled her eyes like it was the dumbest question she’d ever heard. “Because you’re an evil long-lifer. Duh. You came to the resort looking for a half-wife, right? You’re one of those fatta gits who takes the Resusant drugs, right? Keeps you young forever or whatever. What are you, like, a hundred years old? You look fifty but I know that is a lie. You must be old as shit.”

Anton’s eyes widened. “Is that what this is about? You’re attacking men who take longevity pills?”

Morgan shrugged. “Look, the Queen Bee says those old guy pills are draining the planet dry. You guys take them and live like, three times as long as everyone else. Meanwhile, we’re all out here dying. No food, no water, no future. And you’re not exactly lifting a finger to help the rest of us, are you?”

Anton stared at her. “So you kidnap me? Drag me out into the drylands to die like a dog?”

“We’re not killing you,” Morgan said, as if that cleared everything up. “Well... not exactly. I mean, yeah, we’re taking you into the dry lands, but not to just drop you and leave. You’ll get a trial. A fair one.”

“A trial?” Anton’s voice cracked. “You’re taking me to some kind of kangaroo court in the middle of nowhere?”

“What is a kangaroo?” Morgan wondered.

“You’re going to the Hive,” Bridget said plainly, turning her head just enough to look at him. “You know. The big compound on Trash Mountain.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Anton said, panic starting to rise in his chest. “What the hell is the Hive? What is this Trash Mountain place? Are you... are you swampers?”

Bridget’s eyes flashed. “You’re not supposed to use that word. It’s a slur.”

Morgan chimed in, softer. “We’re just reg lifers, okay? Normal. We live real lifespans, without the drugs. We don’t want to live to be a hundred and fifty. I mean, I’m only seventeen in real years, so it doesn’t apply to me yet, but still.”

Anton’s thoughts raced. He needed to an escape. The hood and the gag were gone—now he just needed his hands free. The back of the van was sealed off, no windows, no way to see where they were. If he could just loosen the ropes, maybe get to the front by kicking through the plywood barrier to the driver seats. Maybe he could take control. He didn’t know how many people were in the van or who was driving, but he had to try.

“What is this Hive?” he asked, trying to stall, to gather any clue that might help. “A bunch of teenage girls living in a cult?”

He remembered hearing rumors, urban legends about “swampers” living out past the Sun Dog walls. No one took them seriously. No one thought they were real. The owner of the Sun Dog – the big man they called The Panda - had assured him it was all a lie. But now here he was, abducted, bound, being hauled into the wasteland like a criminal.

What had he even done? He took legal drugs. Paid through official channels. Visited a licensed companion resort. Everything above board. If anything, people like him were saving what was left of the country—feeding money into the hollowed-out Gulf Coast economy. Why else would anyone even come to the ruined bywaters anymore? New Orleans was a flooded poison dump and the Sun Dog was bringing in much needed tourists.

“I’ll give you a hundred thousand dollars. Each,” Anton said, trying to sound calm. “Cash. Just let me go.”

The girls looked at each other and burst into giggles.

“Do you even think we use money at the Hive?” Morgan asked, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. “That’s so ridiculous. Money doesn’t mean anything anymore. It’s just trash paper. Maybe if you had gold…”

“I have lots of gold,” Anton said quickly. “Stacks of it. I’m one of the richest men in America. You do know that, right?”

Bridget smirked. “Oh yeah. And that’s exactly why you’re being targeted.”

___________________________________

The Resusant drug was a miracle—if you had the money. Anton knew this better than anyone. Over the decades, he’d spent tens of millions on the medication, not including the procedures and therapies that came with it. The drug catered to the richest tier of society. There were no competitors, no generics. Resusant Corp. owned the future, and it charged whatever it pleased.

For men like Anton, the price didn’t matter. What was wealth if not a tool to keep death at bay? To feel strong again, to walk without pain, to move like a younger man, and—perhaps most importantly—to still be youthful. Almost no aging man could resist that offer.

But Resusant had a flaw. One they had never been able to solve. The drug didn’t work on biologically born women.

In the early days, they had tried. The company had eagerly marketed the pills to both sexes. But for women, the results were catastrophic. Their bones thinned rapidly, cancer rates soared, and some developed strange mental symptoms—early-onset dementia, constant vomiting, paranoia, and hallucinations. There were side effects in men too, of course, but nowhere near the same scale. The company downplayed it at first, but the truth could not be hidden forever.

Eventually, Resusant quietly changed the women’s program. What remained was little more than a fitness routine: exercise plans, diet supplements, vitamin injections. The real drugs—the ones that gave men back their strength, their virility, and their futures—were no longer offered to women at all.

Despite billions in research, science couldn’t fix it. The drugs simply didn’t work with the XX chromosome. Maybe it was a twist of fate. Maybe it was design. No one could say for sure. But Resusant was exclusively for men. And that truth had changed everything.

Anton had once been one of the early adopters of the Resusant protocol, and now he was one of its most faithful long-term clients. He had outlived nearly everyone he knew.

Except his wife Olivia.

Time had touched her, fully and honestly. She was eighty-two now. A lovely woman, naturally aged. Her face had softened, her hands had become slow and gentle. Their love had faded into humble companionship. There was warmth between them still, but no romance.

Anton sometimes told himself that this was noble. That this was how love evolved. But when he looked at himself in the mirror, so youthful and polished, he couldn’t help but feel like he was cheating fate—and cheating her.

Bridget leaned in a little closer, her mouth curling into something between a smirk and a sneer. “Would you like me to be your half-wife, lover boy?” she asked, dragging out each word in a mocking tone. “I’m probably the age you’re looking for, right?”

Anton recoiled, shaking his head. “Don’t be sick. I’m not like that.”

Bridget raised her eyebrows. “Oh? Then what are you like?” she said, her voice cold now. “What is your age limit for girls? Because from where I’m sitting, you seem like a real kronk. All you pill skags are just freaks with deep pockets and no conscience.”

“I’m sorry,” Anton said quickly. “Look—I’m sorry, okay? I’ll apologize for whatever you want me to. Just… you’ve got to get me out of this.”

Bridget crossed her arms. “You can apologize all you want. Doesn’t mean you don’t belong here.”

“You can feel however you want about me,” Anton went on, “but I’m not a criminal. I haven’t done anything to deserve—” He trailed off.

“To die?” Bridget finished for him, her voice sharp.

Anton looked away, his lips pressed tight. The inside of the van buckled and swayed as it sped along. They were off the pavement now. It seemed like they were driving into ravines and over big rocks.

“But you didn’t answer my question,” Bridget said, her tone suddenly lighter. “Would I make a good half-wife for you?”

Anton stared at her, eyes blank.

She tilted her head. “Because that’s what I was supposed to be, you know. A half-wife. All of the girls at the Hive used to be half-wife candidates. That’s what we were created for.”

 “Don’t look at her—pick me,” Morgan said in a high-pitched, mocking voice. She fluffed her tangled curls and grinned like a pageant queen. “I’m prettier, aren’t I?”

Bridget laughed at that, and Morgan played it up, the two of them leaning into each other like sisters sharing a cruel joke.

Anton’s voice was quiet but angry. “It is just a game to you girls, huh?”

“Marry me, Anton. Marry me,” Morgan squeaked.

He swallowed. “How do you know my name?”

The laughter came again, light and girlish and deeply unsettling.

“We know everything,” Bridget said simply. “Every man who checks into the resort—we get a full profile. Background, behavior, preferences. Desires. Every room is wired. Every message is scanned. You have a fetaboo for feet don’t you, Anton?”

“We even have your old texts,” Morgan added with a grin. “Some of them are gross, by the way. Nobody wants to see your ancient crank.”

“They told me the resort was high security,” Anton muttered.

“So much for that,” Morgan said, tossing her head back. Her laughter echoed inside the van.

Yes, so much for that.

Anton sat slumped against the wall for a long minute. His mouth was dry, the air tasted like rust. He wanted a drink of water but was not about to ask.

“Do they ever let people go?” he asked, his voice rough, but low. “At the Hive?”

No one answered for a long moment. The novelty of having a prisoner was wearing thin. Then Bridget said, “Sometimes.”

“Depends,” Morgan added, less convincing.

“Depends on what?”

“Whether you deserve it.”

Anton let out a dry laugh. “And who decides that? High school girls?”

“We’re just guards,” Morgan said, almost bored. “We’re not the ones who do the judging. That’s the Queen Juno Tribunal.”

Anton shook his head slowly. “You’re children.”

“We told you already. We’re seventeen,” Bridget said flatly. “Same age our mothers were when they got sold off as half-wives. Same age they were when they had us.”

“Half-wives can’t have children. It’s impossible,” Anton muttered. “Anyway, the girls at the resort—they’re volunteer employees. They’re compensated.”

“Volunteers? They’re trafficked orphans,” Bridget shot back. “Bred and raised for the program. You think they chose that life?”

“I didn’t know,” Anton said. “I didn’t know any of that.”

Bridget laughed without smiling. “Yeah, you didn’t know. You didn’t know where all the clean water came from. You didn’t know who built the Sun Dog. You didn’t know what happened to the girls after they aged out. Did you know they keep aged out girls in a prison under the resort? But you knew just enough to look the other way. You aren’t the first git to be captured, Anton. We’ve had this conversation already.”

Anton looked down at his hands. The ropes were beginning to cut into his skin, the edges soaked dark with sweat and dried blood. He flexed his fingers slowly, quietly. “So the Hive... it’s what, a revenge camp?”

“No,” Morgan said. “It’s the last good place. A place where people remember.”

“Remember what?”

“Before,” Bridget said. “Before the pills. Before the droughts. Before the world dried out and the sun got hot.”

“You’ll see,” Morgan added, her voice strange now, almost wistful. “It’s not what you think.”

“I think you are in a cult,” Anton replied.

“You know it was your little makeout session at the lake that got you caught, right?” Morgan said with a smirk, her voice thick with mockery. “That girl you were with—Rachel? Yeah, she is one of us. She was in on it the whole time. And you actually thought she liked you. That’s hilarious.”

She burst out laughing. “How did you think you were gonna get away with that? You know there are, like, ten thousand cameras at the Sun Dog Resort, right? You can’t even take a piss in a back alley without seven cameras locking onto your face. It’s the Sun Dog, come on.”

Anton’s voice was quiet. “Rachel. She sold me out?”

“Of course she did,” Bridget said, smiling like it was obvious.

“But the Sun Dog girls make good money,” Anton said. “That’s what I was told.”

“You keep coming back to money,” Morgan replied, her tone turning colder. “The whole half-wife system is going to fall. And it’s going to start with the Sun Dog Resort.”

“You really believe that?” Anton asked, disbelief creeping in. “Look, I’m not against women—I’m sympathetic. But this is just how the science worked out. Men get long lives and women don’t. It’s not our fault.”

Bridget snorted. “You actually believe that? That the pills only work for men because of ‘science’? You don’t think the corporations rigged it that way? The same corporations run by rich white men? You really believe this wasn’t designed?”

She shook her head. “Wow. I used to think you haggards were just evil. But you’re actually stupid. That’s worse.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Anton muttered.

A long silence settled in the van. Then Morgan said, almost to herself, “What I don’t get is—why not just go to Bourbon Street and get a prosty dolly like regular horn dogs? Why this whole fake system with the Sun Dog girls and the half-wife contracts? What’s the point of pretending it’s respectable? I mean, it’s about whore sex, right?”

Anton’s face went hard. “The half-wife system works,” he said stiffly. “It works for my friends. They’re happy. Their first wives are happy. And the half-wives are well taken care of.”

Bridget’s eyes narrowed. “Taken care of. Like an employee. We’re not furniture. We’re not robots. We’re human. We have souls, you know?”

Anton leaned his head back against the wall of the van and closed his eyes. His head was pulsing with pain. The van began to climb a steep grade. The engine groaned louder, gears grinding. Through the cracks in the floor, a faint new smell crept in—smoke, scorched metal, and something like burnt tires. The Hive.

“We are home,” Bridget said.

Anton sat for hours in the holding cell at The Hive. It was an empty little room with walls the color of red clay. The only decoration was a series of old symbols painted roughly onto the surface: a snake twisted into barbed loops, a wide-eyed woman drawn in cartoon style, holding a serpent in each hand. There were crude images of swords crossed in angry Xs, jagged knives, spears—all of it designed to unsettle.

Eventually, boredom gave way to reflection, and Anton found himself thinking about the Sun Dog resort and Rachel.

She’d seemed so different from the other half-wife candidates at the resort. Had she been playing him from the start? Had he done something wrong?

Their night at Lake Pontchartrain had felt real. She had kissed and touched him first, right? They were drunk and high but everything about it had been mutual. Or so he thought. Now he wasn’t sure what had happened.

Rachel didn’t have the Sun Dog synthetic smile or bleached curls. She had jet-black hair cut into short bangs and eyes outlined in dark mascara, giving her the look of a doe-eyed alien. Her face was long and pale, almost ghostlike. She looked like a goth girl dropped into a village of cloned blondes, and to Anton, that had been magnetic. He’d never met a half-wife who didn’t fit the plastic model mold before. This was the 22nd century—alternative girls had gone out of style long ago. At least in the sterilized resort bubbles.

And she wasn’t just strange—she was smart. Unusually smart for a half-wife prospect. She could read. That alone was rare. Reading and writing had become blasé, an activity for commoners. The ultra-wealthy paid servants to read for them and then bragged about not being able to decipher children’s books.

But Rachel quoted Shakespeare like it was air. She threw out lines from Nietzsche and passages from the Beat poets. Kerouac. Ginsberg. She was a walking library in a world that had all but banned books.

Where had she gotten it all? Who taught her? Had the whole thing been a illusion from the beginning? A clever setup designed to bring him down? To lure him into a web he couldn't even see?

It also struck Anton as a little strange—maybe even suspicious—that Rachel had tattoos. No one at the resort had tattoos. It just wasn’t a thing. The girls were expected to be clean, polished, interchangeable, and plastic. But Rachel’s right side—only her right—was covered in black ink. The marks were messy and scattered, like a notebook doodled on over years. Cartoons, coded letters, names he didn’t recognize, a redwood tree outline, and what looked like constellations. The ink had faded in places, sinking gently into her pale skin.

"Why only one side?" Anton had asked.

"Because I’m left-handed," she said with a laugh. "I did them all myself. Some with a gun, some inked with hand-poked bamboo. Depends on the mood. There’s a lot of downtime here. Rich old men get boring."

"Am I boring?" Anton had asked, half-joking.

"A little bit," she said, smirking as she sipped her drink.

There was something so easy in the way she said it. No cruelty, just honesty. Anton wasn’t used to people telling him the truth.

He leaned in closer, emboldened by the booze. "Do your tattoos... cover your whole right side? Even the parts I can’t see yet?"

Yet?

He meant it playfully, flirtatiously, but as soon as the words left his mouth, he knew it sounded wrong—like something a creep would say.

Rachel didn’t flinch. She just gave him that same smirk and signaled the bartender for another round. She didn’t answer the question.

After drinks, Rachel took Anton back to her place. It was strictly against the rules at the Sun Dog Resort to bring guests into private residences — which only made it more exciting. They were breaking resort protocol, and that made the night feel dangerous.

In addition to being a tattooist, Rachel was an artist, and every inch of the space showed it. The walls were crowded with canvases — landscapes, portraits, animals, moody compositions of the cemeteries around New Orleans. Anton could see, even through the buzz of his drink, that she was talented.

As the edge of their intoxication began to fade, Rachel pulled out a hidden tray from beneath the cupboard. It was filled with pills — every color and shape imaginable, like an adult candy drawer. Hallucinogens, stimulants, sedatives.

“Which one should we take?” she asked with a sly grin. “Maybe we should gobble them all up.”

Anton wasn’t supposed to mix any drugs with the age-defying medication he was on. He was already being risky with the heavy booze intake. Even mild medications could trigger strange reactions — very dangerous ones.

“I can’t,” he said quietly. “It could mess me up. Bad.”

Rachel looked genuinely disappointed. “I thought we were gonna have fun tonight,” she said, lowering her voice. “You know I don’t bring just anyone back here.”

Anton hesitated. Then, feeling the pull of her eyes, her voice, the danger of it all — he reached for a small orange pill speckled with white spots.

“What about this one?”

“That one?” Rachel smirked. “That one’ll take you out past the solar system. You’ll be floating somewhere near Alpha Centauri.”

Anton laughed, tossed the pill into his mouth, and washed it down with the last of his whiskey.

Rachel grinned and popped a little red pill into her mouth.

“Open up,” she commanded.

“Another pill? Are you trying to kill me?” he said in a slurred voice.

“Look, if you want to get with me tonight then you need to swallow momma’s pills.”

She dropped a white pill onto his tongue. “The fun part is, I don’t even really know what all of these do,” she said. “We’ll just have to find out.”

She stood, tugged his hand. “Let’s go down to the Lake shore. Stumble around a little. Then see what happens.”

“In public?” Anton asked. “Aren’t there, like… cameras and security everywhere?”

Rachel just smiled, that same pouty, seductive smile that had gotten him into this mess in the first place. “Like I said,” she whispered, pulling him close, “I thought we were gonna have fun tonight.”

At some point he must have blacked out. But Anton thought he remembered walking home. No, that wasn’t right. And when did he get kidnapped? Had Rachel helped tie him up?

Either way, now Anton slumped against the mud-daubed prison wall, staring at a painted Minoan woman holding snakes.

What is with all the snakes? Anton wondered. Come to think of it, wasn’t there a barbed snake tattooed on the underside of Rachel’s arm.

Am I losing my mind? He wondered.

Anton was led into the courtroom in shackles. His head and face had been shaved smooth, and his skin was slick with a pale coat of disinfectant plaster. At the Hive, men were dirty and needed to be sanitized. He wore a honeycomb yellow robe—the color of purification. To his left and right stood men dressed the same, all with blank shell-shocked stares and shaved heads. Maybe they were from the resort, maybe from other traps laid by the Hive girls. Their eyes met briefly.

The courtroom wasn’t like the holding cell at all. It was a tower, narrow at the base and blooming outward like the throat of a flower. High above, the ceiling flared open into a skylight, and late-afternoon sun slashed across the space in blinding beams. The walls were clay-red and slick with polish. Heavy wooden supports, thick as tree trunks, were wedged through the walls like the ribs of a giant creature. High above, birds had built their nests in the latticework of the beams.

After a while, a bell rang out—sharp and metallic—and a voice echoed across the chamber:

"All rise to acknowledge Queen Juno Excisia, Ruler of the Realm above and below, Keeper of the Sacred Snake Shrine, Protector of the Hive, as she enters our Room of Truth and Justice."

Everyone stood. The shackled men like Anton were pulled upright by the guards. The Queen’s robe trailed behind her like a golden river, carried by four silent attendants. Her outfit was heavy with embroidery and shaped to echo the Hive motif—a honeycomb of gold and amber threads. Her face was pale, her lips dark as wine. Following the Queen, two black-clad women emerged. They wore enormous dark purple escoffions — medieval headpieces shaped like twin velvet horns — balanced precariously on their narrow skulls. They were the Queen’s prosecution team and would do most of the talking.

Anton’s trial was up. It was long and painful, a parade of unfamiliar faces, each ominously appearing on video screens to condemn him. Some were real people, others artificial recreations—witnesses pulled from the archives of his entire life. His footprint on display. The lawyers read his crimes aloud in cold, clipped voices, as if reciting inventory.

It wasn’t like anything Anton had imagined. No one to defend him. No naysayers questioning the proceedings.

Why even have a trial? Just shoot me, he thought.

Here it was laid bare: Every word he’d ever typed. Every message. Every passing comment recorded. The Hive owned it all. They spoke of his indiscretions, his vulgar fantasies, his identity theft. They pulled up charts. Emotional profiles. A full psychological breakdown. Everything, sorted neatly into scientific categories: “Exploitative Tendencies,” “Gender Bias,” “Non-Regenerative Behavior,” “Cognitive Disregard for Communal Ethics and Female Autonomy.”

The questions were rapid fire to the point of mind-numbing.

“Mr. Childress, did you fire your secretary Mrs. Stevenson to avoid her impending paid maternity leave?”

“Were you one of the original investors in the anti-aging drug Resusant? A medication that not only is engineered to just treat males but also effectively break down and destroy female patients?”

And on and on.

The audience grew bored quickly. This was nothing new for them — just another weekly trial in the Hive. It was always a row of men brought in, all of them rich, all of them privileged. One by one, their sins were read aloud. Crimes against women and the poor. Exploitation. Violence. Manipulation. The sentences were always the same: prison, forced labor, or death. The spectacle was meant to entertain, but it had become a routine — predictable and dull. Yes, the men were guilty. But the guilt had become so common it no longer shocked anyone.

Then, the audience woke up.

A final piece of evidence was brought out — saved for the end, as always, for dramatic effect. The screen lit up and a woman’s face appeared. Freckled cheeks, red hair, soft green eyes. The lawyer turned to Anton.

“Did you have an affair with this woman?”

Anton hesitated. Then said quietly, “Yes.”

“When did you cheat on your wife with her?”

“Twenty years ago,” Anton replied. “A long time ago.”

“How long did the affair last?” the lawyer asked.

“A year. About that.”

“And then it ended abruptly?”

“Yes,” Anton said.

“Why did it end?”

“I felt guilty.”

“You felt guilty for cheating on your wife?”

Anton nodded. “Yes.”

“But there’s more to the story, isn’t there?” the prosecutor said, voice sharpening.

Anton shifted. Said nothing.

“What happened to the girl?”

“She got pregnant,” he said, barely audible.

“Yes,” the lawyer nodded, “that would complicate things, wouldn’t it?”

“Yes,” Anton said. “Very much.”

“You and your wife never had children, did you?”

“No,” he answered. “Olivia couldn’t. And we never adopted.”

Now, the courtroom was silent. Listening.

“How did your wife react to the pregnancy?”

Anton looked down. “She never knew.”

“Was there an abortion?”

“I don’t want to talk about this,” Anton muttered.

But the lawyer wouldn’t let go.

“Answer the question,” she pressed.

“No,” Anton finally said. “There was no abortion. She had the children.”

“Children?” the lawyer asked.

“Yes. Twins.”

The silence in the courtroom turned heavy.

“What happened to them?”

“We… decided to deal with the situation.”

“Deal with it how?”

“In the Roman custom,” Anton said.

“The Roman custom?” the lawyer asked. “Explain.”

Anton paused. Then spoke slowly, deliberately.

“They were taken into a field. And left. Exposure is what they called it.”

“Exposure,” the lawyer repeated. “You mean... left to die?”

Anton closed his eyes. “Yes.”

A sharp breath passed through the courtroom like a wind. Gasps. Someone shouted a curse at him.

“I have just one more question,” the lawyer said.

She stepped forward, her voice clear and cutting.

“What gender were the babies?”

Anton covered his face with both hands.

“They were girls,” he said.

 “No further questions,” the lawyer said, stepping back.

After the guilty verdict was read, Anton was led out of the tower by a large woman in a frightening feral-yellow mask. The tall disguise was covered in sharp spikes and inked with the hive’s signature honeycomb pattern. She also wore a tangled, earthy shroud like a hunting disguise. It was covered in trinkets, pollinator flowers, and bells. Surely, Anton thought, this was an executioner.

He expected to have his head cut off and blood smeared on the tower walls. But instead, he was marched through the hive’s iron gates and into the dead marsh beyond. The sky pink behind him, and the evening air was thick with dust. Behind him, two more enforcers followed, carrying electric cattle prods. But they didn’t need the weapons. Anton walked quietly, head bowed. He was done resisting. He accepted whatever was coming.

About a mile out from the citadel, they came to a flat, open space. In the center of it, a great millstone lay half-buried in the cracked earth. The guards led Anton to it. The stone was stained with dried blood.

This is the killing stone, he thought.

But there was no execution. Without a word, they locked his handcuffs to a thick iron ring fixed to the stone. Then they stripped the yellow robe from his body and tossed it in the dirt.

“Not like this,” he muttered. “At least a little dignity.”

The woman in the honeycomb mask left him without a word.

He was alone and naked — abandoned, as his twins had once been.

Exposure.

The wind picked up as the sun dropped behind the horizon, dragging shadows across the ground. Anton laid still, the weight of the chain pulling at his wrists. His chest was heavy.

He closed his eyes, hoping for sleep, or peace, or maybe a quick death. An executioner’s blade would have been kinder.

A sound pulled him awake — low, throaty, and near.

A hungry growl.

He opened his eyes to see the shapes of coyotes circling the stone at a distance, their eyes glowing green in the dimming light.

______________________________

Rachel stood on the grassy bank of the lake, smoking a cigarette. Then another. Her boots sank slightly into the wet ground as she watched Anton writhe in the mud, lost deep in a wild hallucination. She’d seen men fall apart like this before — the drugs always dragged them somewhere dark — but Anton looked especially pitiful. Weak. Sad, even. Compared to the others, he fell apart faster.

She wondered where the chemicals had taken his brain. What broken corner of his mind was playing itself out? At one point, he looked up at her through mud-caked eyes and said, “Where are you taking me? I don’t wanna go there. Take these handcuffs off.”

“You are not wearing handcuffs, Anton,” she replied.

She flicked the ash from her cigarette and stared at him with hollow eyes. He wasn’t talking to Rachel — not really. He was somewhere else entirely. Somewhere far worse.

The meltdown went on for an hour. Maybe longer. Anton drooled, crawled, wept. He sobbed out half-finished prayers and apologies. Near the end he striped off his clothes and flopped around naked like a fish.

“I’m sorry,” he whimpered. “I didn’t mean it. I’m so sorry. I wished it could’ve been different. Those sweet baby girls. All alone. Forgive me…”

Rachel watched passively. What the hell had he done to bring this on himself?

But in the end, it didn’t matter. The names and faces changed. The guilt never did. Every one of these pill-poppers had helped build this world — a world stacked against her — and now it was catching up to them.

Anton’s strength gave out. His arms buckled, and he collapsed into the shallow edge of the lake. Face first.

Rachel watched the bubbles gurgle from his mouth. They slowed. Then stopped. A drowning in four inches of water.

That’s enough, she thought. Better this way. No marks. No bruises. Just a man who drank too much, took a couple pills, and wandered out a lake. Just another resort accident.

She looked down at her boots, half-wondering if her footprints could be traced.

Who cares, she thought.

She walked back to her apartment without hurrying. Once inside, she cleaned her shoes and wiped down every surface Anton might’ve touched — out of habit, not fear. No one would trace this back to her.

Then she plugged in her electric tattoo needle and settled into her favorite chair. The soft hum of the machine calmed her and she loved the pain. She pressed it to her skin and began to poke two new letters into her forearm — slow, steady strokes.

A.C. for Anton Childress.

As the fresh ink dried, she leaned back and looked over the jumble of initials lining her arm — fading reminders, a hit list. Boys who once believed they were untouchable.

The smell of Anton’s expensive cologne still hung in the air. Rachel opened a window and let the cool evening air drift into her room. She breathed in slowly, letting it settle in her lungs. Her eyes wandered to the whiskey bottle on the table.

One more drink, she thought. Then sleep.

She poured the drink and sipped it quietly, standing at the open window. Down below, the street hummed with life. Rich men laughing and leering at potential half-wives. The nightly dance of promises and pretend. Rachel watched for a moment, then turned away. Beautiful people, she thought. Living short imaginary lives.

© Jym Davis, 2025.