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  The three youngest siblings were triplets, all girls. Amelia had read something in school once, about how humans were experiencing a lot of weird side-effects after the war –– one of which was increased fertility, which led to a spike in women getting pregnant with twins, triplets, even quadruplets. By the time the triplets came along, the Cobbles were exhausted, broke, and sick of parenting. They didn’t name any of the babies at first, as is protocol, but when the triplets’ fourth birthday rolled around (an event their parents completely forgot about), they still didn’t have names picked out.

  “Can’t we just keep calling them CB5, CB6, and CB7? That’s what’s on their birth certificates?” Gwen had asked after Amelia reminded her it was their name day.

  “No, mom, we can’t.”

  “Then you name them, I don’t give a shit.”

  That night, Amelia collected her four younger siblings in her bedroom and held an unofficial family meeting. She was only six at the time, Alvin five.

  “Today is a very special day,” she said, looking into the triplets’ innocent, smiling faces. “Today is the day you guys get to pick your very own names! Isn’t that exciting?”

  “Yay!” they all yelled.

  “I want to be named Cat,” said CB5. “I love cats!”

  “Okay, good,” said Amelia. “Your name is now Cat.”

  “Can I be dog?” asked CB6.

  “But you don’t even like dogs, you’re afraid of them,” said Alvin. “You should be called Whisper because you’re always so quiet.”

  “I like that name,” said CB6. “Ame, can I be whisp–– withsp––” She had trouble sounding out the word. “Whisper?” She finally got it.

  “Sure.” She looked to the last triplet, CB7, the youngest of the three. “What about you?”

  “I want to be called Amelia.”

  “But that’s her name,” said Cat, pointing at Amelia. “You can’t have the same name!”

  “Why not?” cried CB7. “It’s my favorite name!”

  “It will be too confusing,” whined Alvin.

  “But I like it!”

  “I have an idea,” Amelia chimed in. “Since you all call me Ame anyway, why don’t we call you Lia. It’s the second half of Amelia. How does that sound?”

  CB7 frowned and was silent a moment. She said the name to herself a few times, then nodded and said, “Okay. I’ll be Lia.”

  And that was that. The next day, Amelia approached her mom and told her that the triplets had new names. She asked if it would be possible for Gwen to go down to the district hall building and have their birth certificates changed, to which her mom said she would get around to it eventually.

  She never did, and when the triplets started school, they were registered under their original names, which became a whole ordeal for both them and their teachers. When Amelia was eleven, she finally made the trip to the district hall building, all by herself, and made the changes herself. They didn’t even request any paperwork or check her ID tag. They simply pulled the triplets’ files and changed the names right then and there, which automatically changed their names in all the official registry systems in the district and connected the new names to their ID tag numbers.

  She passed the district hall building on her way home from Victoria’s. It was getting close to nine o’clock and all the lights were off inside. Most buildings and shops were closed and the bars and restaurants were just starting to open. As she made her way out of the West Eight and closer to the East Eight, Amelia started to feel more in her element. Her grimy clothes didn’t stand out as dramatically in this crowd of rowdy bar goers and homeless boozers, and she knew she could walk into just about any building on the block and nobody would question her right to be there.

  She rounded the corner, smiling politely at the bouncer sitting outside one of the bars, who called her beautiful and told her she should stop in for a drink. This street, which eventually fed into a dead end, at which her parents’ house stood right in the middle, was lined with abandoned houses, which were often occupied by drug users and prostitutes, a couple of whom Amelia knew growing up and who she felt undying sympathy for. She was well aware of the fact that there were only a few, seemingly unimportant life choices that separated her from them, and that she could have easily found herself in a similar situation and was just lucky.

  There was a light on in her house, she could see in the distance. She guessed the triplets were home, hopefully working on their homework. They still hadn’t graduated. They dropped out a few times, over the years, as the Cobbles faced various instances of family turmoil and financial despair, but they went back last year and had been doing really well ever since.

  Lost in thought, remembering her own high school days and trying not to think about what may have happened to some of her friends from those days, Amelia’s vigilance faded and she failed to notice, before it was too late, that a large man in a trench coat and heavy boots was following her.

  She heard him step, and as she turned around to look, he wrapped one arm behind her back, pinning her arms to her sides, and used his other hand to cup a chemically smelling cloth over her mouth. Recognizing the situation, Amelia held her breath, so as to not breath in chloroform, and tried to fight her way out of the man’s grip.

  He held her tightly. “No use in fighting,” he said quietly. “You have to breath eventually, and I can hold a skinny thing like you for hours and hours.”

  Taking a chance, Amelia opened her mouth and bit down hard on the man’s hand. He dropped the cloth and yelled, slightly loosening his grip. Amelia screamed, “Help! Help!” thinking there had to be at least one crackhead or squatter in the area. A few people did come out of a nearby house and stare, but none of them moved to help her. After a few seconds, she felt her body slowly become limp and her mind begin to fog. She had ingested enough chloroform to do the trick and now she was moments from losing consciousness. She let out a final, pathetic cry for help, saw the light in her house flick off, and was out.

  3

  Human Goods

  Amelia rolled over, only half awake and felt something cold and metal press against the front of her thighs. The cold shocked her back to the waking world and her eyes flew open. It was dark, wherever she was, but not pitch black. Some light was streaming in through the crack underneath a door about ten feet from where she lay. The cold sensation came from thick metal bars, which, she realized with horror as she pushed herself up into a sitting position, were the walls of the cage in which she was currently being held.

  She reached a hand out, through the bars, and made a fist with her hand, then spread her fingers wide, trying to determine whether or not this was all real, or just the start of some terrible nightmare.

  “You’re up,” said a voice behind her.

  Amelia got to her feet and spun around. There were three other women in the cage with her, all standing around in their underwear, holding their arms protectively across their stomachs and chests. Amelia looked down to evaluate the state of her own clothing, and found that she too had been stripped down to her bra and panties. With her clothes, they must’ve taken her wallet, which had only a few dollars and her food stamp card, which allowed her to get meals from the hospital after she finished four hours of work or more.

  “Where am I?” she said, staring down the woman in the middle, who was standing a foot or two in front of the others and smiling. “What’s going on?”

  “You got snatched,” said the woman. “We all did.”

  “Snatched?”

  The woman rolled her eyes. “Don’t act dumb. It won’t get you very far with the shifters, that’s for sure.”

  “Shifters? Is that who grabbed me, a shifter?”

  “No, that was Benny, the head snatcher.” The cage was cube shaped, roughly three meters by three by three. The two women standing behind the one Amelia now took as their unofficial leader had pushed themselves into the back corners and were shivering, which prompted Amelia to also notice how chil
ly it was in the room. “Benny is human,” the woman continued. “All the snatchers are pretty much. They grab us, drug us, strip us, and sell us. Their slogan, not mine.”

  “Sell us to who?”

  “Are you really that thick?” The woman advanced on Amelia, who took a step back and found herself pressed against the metal bars. “To supernaturals, obviously, who else?”

  “But why? For what?”

  “Any number of things!” She threw her hands into the air and walked back towards the other two. “They can use us for whatever they want once they’ve purchased us. That’s sort of the whole point. They own us.”

  “But that’s illegal.”

  The woman laughed. “You’re funny,” she said, wearing a smile that was a little too manic for Amelia’s liking. “I’m Dara. It’s a shame you didn’t come sooner. You’re much better company than Lola and Tia over hear. All they ever do is cry and beg to be let free.”

  “Wait,” Amelia looked at the woman in the right corner. “Your name is Lola?”

  The woman looked up at Amelia and frowned, most likely searching her face for any sign of recognition. “Yes, do I know you?”

  “You know my friend, Victoria.” Amelia took a step forward. “She thought something like this might’ve happened to you.”

  “You know Victoria?” Lola stopped cowering and rushed to Amelia. “How is she? She didn’t get snatched too, did she?”

  “No, she’s fine. At least, she was fine the last time I saw her.” Amelia squinted her eyes and scanned the room outside of the cage, looking for a window. “How long has it been since they brought me here?”

  Lola shrugged. “It’s hard to say. Four hours maybe?” She wrung her hands and there Amelia could tell she was crying, even though she couldn’t actually see the tears in such dim light. “I thought for sure Victoria would think I just blew her off. I felt awful. We didn’t know each other that well so there was no way she was going to come looking for me…”

  “If it helps,” said Amelia. “She was really worried about you.”

  Lola nodded. “That… doesn’t really help, but it’s a nice sentiment. They already have a buyer lined up for me, they said so earlier today. He’s from another district, so there’s no way I’ll ever see her again.”

  “You don’t know that for sure!” Amelia went to the bars and grabbed two of them in her hands, pulling with all her weight. “There has to be a way out of here! Have you tried––”

  “We’ve tried everything,” said Dara. “There is no way out.”

  “But what about––”

  “We’ve tried it.” Dara shook her head and looked down at her feet. “We have tried everything. There is no way out.” She brought her arms up and crossed them over her stomach, and Amelia noticed she had a bandage wrapped around her bicep. All of them did.

  “Did they hurt you?” Amelia asked, pointing to Dara’s arm.

  “They took our ID tags.”

  “What?” Amelia instinctively reached for her upper arm, where her ID tag, which she had since the day she was born, sat just underneath the skin. “They dug them out?”

  Dara nodded. “Yup. And they will do the same to you. They were about to do it when you were out cold, but they got interrupted. Which is a bummer, because that means they’ll have to cut you open while you’re awake.”

  “They can’t!” Amelia felt her body begin to shake. “It sets of an alarm, doesn’t it? That’s what they always said, the police and law officials! They always warn criminals not to try to take their ID tags out because it sets off an alarm somewhere…”

  “That’s just a thing they say to scare you into obeying,” said Dara. “There aren’t any alarms anywhere.”

  Amelia opened her mouth to argue, unsure exactly what her next retort was going to be, when the door behind her opened up and in walked the man who grabbed her on the sidewalk. “Good morning, sweetheart!” he said loudly, in a cheery, booming voice. “How was your nap?”

  Amelia didn’t say anything. The light from the open door illuminated the room better, and she saw that there were two other cages in the room, both currently empty. She watched as Benny stalked across the room and went to a chest of drawers in the back corner. He was a massive man. She was thinking he couldn’t possibly be as big as she remembered, that the drugs and the fear were coloring her memory, but they weren’t. He really was that large. He had to be seven feet tall, and built like a tank.

  “Don’t worry, girly,” he said, grabbing something from the top drawer of the dresser and walking over to the cage. “This will only hurt for a second.” He held up a short, sharp knife and grinned. “It will be over before you know it, as long as you don’t squirm.” He winked at her and used his free hand to fish into the pocket of his trench coat. He pulled a key out and pushed it into the heavy padlock wrapped around the cage door.

  Amelia instinctively walked backwards to the other side of the cage, bumping into the other women in the process.

  “Don’t make me come in there and get you,” said Benny. “I’m too old to go chasing young, pretty girls around.”

  Amelia looked at Lola and whispered, “If we can get him in here, then maybe I can distract him while you guys run past and get away.”

  Lola shook her head. “It’s not just him. There are at least a dozen men in the other room.”

  Amelia wracked her brain for a plan b, when a hand pressed against her back between her shoulder blades and shoved her forward and out of the cage door. She stumbled to her hands and knees and looked over her shoulder and saw the third woman, the one who hadn’t said a word to her, holding her arm out straight and looking like a deer in the headlights.

  Benny reached his hands underneath her arms and lifted Amelia to her feet. “That a girl.” He dragged her out of the room and into the bright hallway. “The sooner we get this over with, the sooner we can get you sold. You’ll bring in a pretty penny, I think. With this boyish body, you could please a wide range of clients.”

  “Let me go!” Amelia started to kick and buck like a spooked horse, but Benny’s grip on her remained firm. “You can’t do this!”

  “I can do whatever I want, sweetheart,” he said in her ear, almost seductively. “Whatever I damn. well. please.”

  Amelia clenched her teeth together and successfully kept herself from screaming for the entire procedure, up until the end. She was quiet when Benny ran the edge of his knife along her skin, opening a half inch gash, from which Amelia’s blood flowed freely. She remained silent when he plunged the pair of tweezers inside the wound and ripped the small rectangular shaped ID tag from her flesh. It was only when the snatcher grabbed the bottle of gin from the table behind him and splashed some into the cut that she let out a heavy, audible sigh.

  “Sorry about that, love,” said Benny. “But you don’t want this to get infected, do you?”

  Amelia didn’t respond.

  He’d brought her to a different room, smaller and cluttered with more furniture and junk. There were two other men in the room when they first arrived, but they both left after Benny told them there was work to be done in the cage room, whatever that meant.

  “It should clot on its own, but if not, I take it you can figure out how to stitch yourself up?” he asked, handing Amelia a large needle and a spool of thread. “I have a lot I need to get done. Have some important clients stopping in this morning.”

  Again, Amelia ignored him.

  He shrugged. “Sew, don’t sew, makes no difference to me.” He put the tools down on the table next to her and walked out of the room. “I’ll be back to collect you when I have time.” He closed the door and Amelia heard the sound of a key being slipped into the lock and twisted.

  Once alone, Amelia finally allowed herself to cry. The tears came very quickly and they were followed by body-shaking sobs. She grabbed a cloth that Benny had left on the table, which he used to wipe the blade “clean”, and pressed it against her wound. A cry of pain escaped her as she pressed
down into her skin, watching the whitish rag turn a deep, dreadful red.

  The bleeding began to slow after a while, and she grabbed some of the medical gauze he left her and wrapped her arm. It was a good thing she didn’t have to stitch herself, Amelia thought. Her mother never did get around to showing her how to use a needle and thread. She winced, pulling the gauze tightly and tying it off.

  That is, if she even knew how.

  Her brain started down one of its favorite paths; the one where she recalls all the ways her parents let her down and blames them for everything going wrong in her life. Except, when an image of her mother came to mind, instead of anger or resentment, all Amelia felt was longing. What she would give to be having a screaming match with her mom right now, over something stupid, like all the stuff they fought about. Maybe they’d argue over the best way to make a grilled cheese, or whether or not it was illegal to be naked in your own house. Amelia smiled and let out a small laugh, remembering these very fights and how, when she was a teenager, she used to look for reasons to get into it with her mother. Some sort of twisted way of getting back at her for all the times Gwen had failed to be there for her.

  The sound of angry voices out in the hall brought Amelia back to the present. Benny was one of the men talking. The other voice was one she didn’t recognize. One of the other snatchers perhaps. Amelia stood and pressed her ear to the door.

  “Sir, I’m so sorry for the mix up.” Benny’s voice seemed higher pitch, stressed. “Clearly there was a miscommunication on one end when we spoke on the phone earlier!”

  “I can tell you for certain there was no miscommunication on my end.” The other man had a stern, confident voice. “I told you specifically that I was looking to purchase human goods.”