Chapter Two                                       

Young Washer and Feeder

            In the sleep shed a sheepish young boy, Feeder, woke his dozing friend.  “Washer!  Get up!”  He firmly nudged his young buddy.  Feeder is a thin boy, four feet  tall, his growth having been stunted by malnutrition. His skin,  spotted with callouses. On a tag on the back of his shorts is a number telling his age: Eleven years old. “Washer!  Wakes you up!  You be sleepin’ too long.  Gets yourself up!”  Feeder pulled a splinter from the floorboard and jabbed it into Washer’s ashen arm.  “Wake up! Tis time!  The sun’s up.  Ya got to gets to workin’.  Wake up!”   He noticed a bull-dog of a boil on Washer’s back, which he decided should be left untouched.

            Now Feeder had been a numan slave of Dr. Lincoln since he was four years old.  He was brought to Dr. Lincoln’s abortion clinic by his mother to be aborted.  But lucky for Feeder, one of  Dr. Lincoln’s numans had died the day before and needed a replacement.  It was really a one out of a million chance at life.  He was a convenient replacement so his life was spared.

            “It be mornin’?  I am sleepy.”  Washer was even smaller than Feeder.  He was bald, no eye brows, with yellow, dry skin.  His body so thin you wondered, by the look of him, how he was strong enough to even stand.  Like a lean tree overburdened with ice, he was sure to fall.  Now Washer was different from Feeder in that he was born in the Doctor’s house for the purpose of giving service and for experimentation.  His biological mother was a haggardly maid in the Doctor’s employ.  She was more than happy to accept a bonus on her check to carry the boy full term.  Washer was conveniently denied the knowledge of how he came to live there.  He did not know whom his mother was.

“No matter.  You get up or you die.  I’ve been shaken you for fi’ minutes.”

            “I get up!”  The small, sleepy boy struggled to pull himself off the cold floor.  “Ya ain’t gotta be stickin’ this numan!”  He had to be careful.  His flesh was glued to the floor by dried blood.  He gingerly pulled at it until the floor released its grip.                                   

            “I do.  You be dead if you ain’t get up.  You ‘leven years old.  You a old man.  You ain’t worth a plucked chicken!”  For they both knew that being late often brought a sentence of death.

            The bare footed servants hurried out of their sleeping quarters.  They ran across the trimmed, verdant tall fescue of the back lawn, stopping briefly to wash their faces, hands and feet at the black spigot.  They entered the door meant for servants of their status, above which was a small white sign with black letters: “Numan Entrance.”  Washer hurried into the kitchen to get a new sponge and his plastic bucket from its place under the sink.  He immediately went to his assigned labor, scrubbing the marble floor.  Feeder attended his duties in the kennel, tending the master’s canines and other animals.  His favorite dog, a cow, a goat, a cat, a chimpanzee and a roan steed, in particular, were well cared for.  There was also a minor menagerie of other assorted exotic animals, none observed in nature  - not one.  All were examples of the doctor’s genetic manipulation and experimentation.  More about them later.

            Soon, Madam Argyle Jenkins, the head mistress, entered the kitchen.  A petite woman in her late thirties, she wore deep frown lines on her forehead; a curse caused by her ill-tempered scowls.   As always, she was in a very bad mood but this morning she had a mission from her employer.  “Get your work done, Washer!”  Madam Jenkins ordered harshly.  “Do it well or you’ll be dog-food tonight!”  The haggard woman took hold of her leather strap that she kept clipped to her dress, and aimed it at the young washer’s heavily scarred back.  “One use of this and you’ll wish you were dead!”  She spotted the crimson, egg-like boil on the back of his left shoulder - an irresistible target.  “And I know just where to hit you.”

            “Yes madam!” the boy answered with a voice barely above a  whisper.  Washer took the lime-green sponge from his bucket.  His frail muscles strained to scrub the soiled floor of Dr. Lincoln’s kitchen.  “Whippin’ ain’t somethin’ I be wantin’ in the mornin,’” he thought.  “Gots to be good.  Gots to work hard.”  His mind was on that devil’s scourge.  He forced his aching muscles to work harder even though a raw pain shot from his thumb to his shoulder.  His knees burned from too much kneeling on cracked calluses.  He remembered the last scourging he had gotten just two days before when he missed a tinge of stain in the corner of the floor.  “That madam just loves to hit us poor numans,” he thought.  “But somethin' must be up.  She gots extra itchy fingers this morn.”

            His thoughts were interrupted by the mistress.  “That’s not good enough  numan!” the madam shouted.  The sadistic woman aimed well.  “Here’s one you won't forget!”

            “This  is it,” he thought.  The boy curled up on his knees and gritted his teeth.  The blow found its mark causing a golf-ball of pink puss to spit onto the flowered kitchen wall.  Its stench  was bad enough to make him  want to vomit.  Blood and pink liquid streamed from the open  wound. The second blow landed on top of the first. The sting from the torn, tender flesh felt like boiling water and filled the tortured boy's eyes with tears, but he remained perfectly silent, knowing a scream would incur her further wrath.

            The madam smiled broadly with a rush of orgasm while openly rubbing her crotch.  Then she bellowed, “Now look what you did!” pointing to the red splash on the wall.  Get over there and wash that wall!  There will be no hard tack for you today!”

            The mention of food caused the starving boy to think about the hard, dry biscuit made to supply numans with enough nourishment to survive.  It was barely nutritious, had the feel of a dog biscuit and tasted like charred bread.

            The madam giggled for a moment, then glowered as she walked away.  She then turned toward him again to derive more voyeuristic joy out of the pathetic spectacle.  “And don't get your mess on the floor!” she taunted, demonically grinning, then openly laughed.  She took out a can of room deodorizer and sprayed it around the kitchen, then directly on Washer’s wound - making his body momentarily stiffened from the sting of the spray.

            “Yes madam!” he replied.  He diverted his attention to his duties.  He learned from plenty of experience that if you worked hard it helped to block out the excruciating burn of the scourge.  With sheer concentration, he willed some of the pain away. It was a survival technique that a numan learns to do only through much practice.   “Gotta work,” he said.  “Ain’t thinkin’ about nothin’.”  He remembered her words.  “No hard tack.  Why ain’t I surprised?  That means scroungin’ ‘round for insects and trappin' field mice for the third day in a row.”

            Washer thought about the rotting meat he had been told to toss days earlier.  Instead, he stashed it in the corner of the sleeping quarters where he and the other numans spent the night.  Too spoiled to eat, it attracted flies and rodents.  At least catching the vermin provided a famished boy a means to cheat death for another day.  His mouth watered at the anticipation of another meal.  He also wondered whether or not the simple but clever traps he devised had caught a rodent or two.  

             The bruised boy’s mind reeled from hunger, lack of sleep and loss of blood.  He started to shiver as waves of chill invaded his body.  He unstained the wall, then dipped the sponge into the bucket to start on the floor again.  The blood that trickled down his arm from his back had to be washed as soon as it hit the floor.  As he worked, the water in the bucket became pink, then red.  “Darn blood.  It be dying the water.  How can I clean the floor with red water?  The more this numan scrub, the redder the floor gets.”  The youngster began to feel very weak, queasy.  “It’s the bleedin’.  I hope I ain’t spit up.  I’ll be clinic bound for sure!”  As his strength drained from his  body, the wearied boy reminisced about Scraper, the missy he knew years ago.  “Don’t spit up, Washer,” he said to himself.  “Ol’ Scraper, she got sick.  She so weak from hunger, she dry heave.  Some got on her work.  Madam was mad.  Took out the whip.  Hit her on the back.  Hit her on the legs.  Hit her on the head.  No more Scraper.”

            Dr. Lincoln's brother, Gene, entered the room from the back yard, wearing soiled coveralls and carrying a shovel.  Washer wondered if he had just buried a dead numan (“fertilized the labyrinth”) or whether he was coming for him - for sometimes the burial, itself, was the method chosen for abortion.  Gene looked at the tortured boy.  “Well what do we have here?” he said in his baritone voice.  “Washer's bleeding.  Poor washer.  Washer needs help.”  The dim-witted man was silent briefly, then uttered a sound from his lips.  Hearing it, you might say it was a sound somewhere between a guffaw and a cry, an unnatural sound that can only be produced by a damaged brain. Twisted and contorted like it was made by something other than human.  “Hee, hee, hoo, yaa, yaa, yaa.”  Its sound felt worse, at times, than the pain of the scourge.  As always, it gave Washer that distinct feeling of dread.  “Washer needs help.  Poor Washer.”