The Click

Over the following several months, Hitch spent as much time as possible trying

to avoid his daughter while Edna spent most of her time consoling her, neither a surprise to either of them. Then one afternoon while he stood on his back porch overlooking the Potomac River, shirtless, and pumping out curls with forty pound dumbbells in front of a full-length standing mirror, Edna stuck her head out the back door, clearly upset.

“Kitten called. She has an appointment tomorrow with Christopher’s pediatrician and asked if we could be there. She wouldn’t say why but I’m afraid …”

Hitch looked over questioningly.

“Oh never mind.” She disappeared without giving Hitch a chance to respond. He knew what Edna was about to say, but then continued curling successfully

blocking the same thoughts from preoccupying his mind. “Seventy-Three, Seventy-Four, Seventy-Five.” After reaching One Hundred curls, he carried the dumbbells to his exercise room and went to the bathroom to dry down and wash his face and hands. In the mirror he could see the V-Mark on his forearm; what looked like a multi-pointed starburst, the size of a quarter, uniformly Indian red in color. Without thinking, he touched it. He hadn’t recalled doing that since … well since OJ. Not surprising, it was smooth, more like a tattoo than a birthmark, which is what he thought it was as a child. However, most kids considered them birthmarks since they were vaccinated at birth. That was the law according to the Vaccine Assurance and Management Agency. All human inhabitants on Earth were to be vaccinated against the ERAM virus and each human inhabitant carried the V-Mark on either the left arm or the right arm. VAMA was everywhere to make sure that happened … in their black hearse-looking vehicles that floated over a roadway of air created by electro-atomic isothermal energy and displaying VAMA in bright yellow on both sides and down the back.

The following afternoon, Hitch, Edna, and Kathy squeezed together in a small examination room watching Dr. Ralph Delahunt inspect Christopher’s V-Mark. Even

from where he sat, Hitch could see how bumpy and dark red it was. Chills ran down his spine.

“Well, young man, you have been very cooperative,” Dr. Delahunt said as he rolled down Christopher’s sleeve and patted him on the back. Meanwhile he looked at Hitch and Edna. “Maybe one of you can take him to the waiting room. The receptionist has several choice selections of candy waiting to be retrieved.”

Before Hitch had a chance to do as the doctor asked, Edna volunteered, leaving her husband and daughter to face Dr. Delahunt who was already holding Kathy’s hand. “I’ve always been candid with you, Sweetheart. The roughness and discoloration on his V-Mark along with the blood work … I’m so sorry.

Kathy went limp and began sobbing. Hitch tried to put his arm around her. She flinched causing him to drop it. He moved to the door left open by Edna and stared into the waiting room where Christopher was unwrapping a piece of candy.

“I’m afraid I’ll need some blood work from you, Oliver,” he heard Dr. Delahunt

say.

He swung around. “Me?”

“You’re a Beater. … And, well you know, first OJ, now …

Hitch held both hands up as if to surrender and shortly thereafter was in the lab area having his blood drawn. Two days later, late in the afternoon, he and Edna were back in the doctor’s office, without Kathy and Christopher this time. Ralph Delahunt sat across from them studying the lab report, nodding his head and shrugging as he did.

“Well,” he said as he handed them the report. “Two Preemies in one family does not appear to be coincidental.”

“Are you saying it’s because of …” Edna started to say without looking at the

report.

Delahunt nodded at the report as if the answers were there and he didn’t want to compound the pain by repeating the reasons aloud. All the time Hitch was studying the report and knew exactly what Ralph didn’t want to verbalize. He was a Carrier of the

virus … of the plague. He was the fucking reason one grandson was dead and the other ….

“Edna, Oliver, I’m so very sorry,” Ralph said as Hitch tried to control himself, as he stared at the words in front of him, as he felt Edna’s hand caress his shoulder. She meant well, he knew, but uncontrolled anger welled up within.

“Don’t be,” Hitch said. “The Click is the will of God. Is it not? If you were the grandparent of two Preemies would you continue to believe that shit?” He crushed the report in his fist and stormed out. Twenty minutes later he was at Hooligan’s drinking all by himself.

Two hours later he found himself KNOCKING at a door. The door opened slowly.

“I’m surprised you waited this long,” Janine Rousseau said.

Over the next several months Edna saw little of her husband. Instead, she spent much of her time with her daughter, taking care of her and Christopher. She knew better than anyone how devastated Kathy was to lose OJ … and now even the thought that the only child she had left was in jeopardy made her … Edna couldn’t finish the thought. She was there, close up, all those years Kathy tried to get pregnant but couldn’t.

Her daughter was a lesbian, a lesbian ‘in hiding’ since being gay was a serious crime in the twenty-third century, made so by Smotec Innocent II, the Black Smotec who Edna regarded with scorn ever since she left the Ecclesian Church as a young adult and learned about him. Nevertheless, Kathy and her partner wanted children, so she secretly resorted to IVF, in vitro fertilization, secretly because IVF procedures were also seriously illegal, like everything else relating to the procreation process outside of God’s hands, even birth control pills. All those evangelists and the Black Smotec won that battle many years earlier after the Cūtocracy took political control of government after government. Edna knew her history.

Eight attempts at IVF all failed. As a last resort, Kathy went through the black market and hired a surrogate using her eggs and sperm from a black market sperm bank.

The combination produced OJ. A week after OJ’s birth, Kathy’s partner died in an automobile accident. After several years of grieving, she decided to have a second child, Christopher, the same way.

Edna and Kathy were in the kitchen one afternoon spreading chocolate frosting on a cake they had baked earlier when Christopher came bounding down the stairs from his bedroom. He rushed into the kitchen with a box of birthday candles. “Grandma, here. It’s your birthday tomorrow. … I remembered.” He handed her the box. “How many candles should I put on it?”

Mother and daughter froze, but Edna quickly shook herself out of the anxiety that flooded her entire body, and hugged Christopher. “That’s so sweet of you, my Darling.” He of course didn’t know this was to be her seventy-fifth, a birthday no one celebrated.

Nevertheless, she took seven candles from the box and had Christopher put them on the cake. The following evening after the family had dinner, Kathy brought out the cake and Christopher helped his grandfather light the candles. Christopher sang Happy Birthday with total joy while his mother and grandfather followed along, trying to smile as best they could.

That day and for several months to follow she neither heard nor felt the Click. Maybe it won’t come she thought on a number of occasions but dared not voice those hopes believing they would jinx her. Maybe she, like her husband, was destined to beat the Click. She wasn’t aware of two Beaters in the same family, but that didn’t mean there weren’t any. After all they had two Preemies in the same … Even the beginning of that thought made her knees buckle and caused her to put the whole idea out of her mind.

Then one night hours after she and Oliver retired, she screamed out, “Enough!” causing him to practically fall out of bed. “I’ve had it, Oliver. I can’t take the waiting.”

Less than a month later, they were meandering down a path in the park. Edna suddenly stopped. Her hands flew up to her temples. CLICK, CLICK, CLICK. Oliver led her to a bench nearby. They sat. Their eyes met and shared a deep gloom. Oliver grabbed his wife’s hands and squeezed. The clicking, more like the intermittent winding of a grandfather clock, subsided. She had so hoped to beat it, not for her sake, but for Kathy’s

and Christopher’s. They were all so close, and she wasn’t entirely sure Oliver would always be there for them.

That night and for many to follow she went to bed terrified she would not wake up. Then one night several weeks after hearing the Click the first time, she knew the end was near. It was around midnight. She looked to her left. Oliver was fast asleep. Her eyes remained opened, wide, staring at him, then the ceiling. Just when she decided to roll over and try to sleep she felt it coming. Seconds later, CLICK, CLICK, CLICK, CLICK. She reached over and shook her husband of almost fifty years. He knew. She could see it in his eyes. He held her tight. CLICK, CLICK. She felt her body dissolve into a bubbliness heap of nothingness with each note in God’s final song of silence. She trembled. She felt Oliver tremble. In her mind’s eye she could see the hands approaching midnight! She peered beyond Death’s final goodbye and saw nothing. No road to salvation as the Church of the Ecclesia had promised, no second chance in the greater world beyond, no singer of songs. Her final plea was to her husband.

“Oliver, make Christopher well. Promise me you’ll make Christopher ...” She died in his arms hearing him promise he would do everything within his

power. She also heard him cry. That made her happy and sad as she took her last breath on Earth.