"Multiples" by Tyler Waide

We garble-saunter down the way, peering through the food shops and hot dog stands, arguing over what to eat. I want Mexican--I’m dying for a carnitas tostada--but my assemblage hates to eat meat. They want tofu burgers or peanut stir fry or some other disgusting display of vegetarianism. Just once, I wish I could have a grease-brimming steak smothered in ground sausage and a cup of gravy as beverage. That would be the day, though.
Another assemblage knocks into our shoulder, without apology, leering at us for a moment. Then they continue on, urgent-walking into the nearest office building.
“People are so rude these days,” Susan says within our head. “So bitter.”
Of course, we are just as bitter as most, especially to each other. I am bitter towards Tucker most of all. He is the part of us that always tries to take over the body, do all the talking, do all the deciding, everything. And then he complains when he doesn’t get his way. If he keeps it up I’m going to demand we go to the courts to get him removed. Then he can go plague some other assemblage.
“We’re getting bean stew,” Tucker argues to us.
“Sorry, Tucker,” Mary says. “It’s my turn to choose.”
“No, it’s not.” His voice bully-whines. “You had us eat that vomit-soup the other day.”
“That was last week, and it was good.”
“Yeah, right.”
Arne barges in with his hunter’s voice. “She’s right, Tucker. It’s not your turn until tomorrow.”
Arne is the oldest of us, probably forty by now. Some of the older people got to be put inside of young assemblages. This was to add wisdom to the group. Of course, each of us had a strong characteristic to add. I add the artistic sense.
Before we were merged, I was a painter. Even as a high-school student, I won dozens of awards. The teachers made me paint the school a mural over graffiti-walls before I graduated, and it was a giant crab with humans for feet. They called my style, “A chaotic display of surrealism.” And everybody thought I would be a famous artist one day.
But that didn’t last. After the merging, I could not paint anything. Not only were the hands I had to work with unsteady and backwards, but my assemblage couldn’t stop whining at me. Not a single one of them appreciate the creative arts.
“We’re going to the salad bar,” Mary tells us.
She was added to our assemblage because she is very left-brained. Math came as easy to her as painting came to me. Of course, Susan is good at math too, but she’s not a mathematical genius like Mary.
Susan was added for her purity and religious strength. She is the one who prays for us and gives us spiritual guidance. However, religion is not supposed to be a big thing these days. We say we are Catholic, but it is only for Susan’s sake. She was the only one who was religious prior to merging.
We are in Susan’s body, by the way. The courts selected hers because it was the healthiest. Both Tucker and I were smokers, so they didn’t choose either of us. Mary was too hefty and Arne was too old. Of all five of us, I’m glad we are in Susan’s body. She is like a piece of art; curve-slender features, brown absorbing eyes, platinum blonde hair streaming down the softness of our back.
We go into a salad bar and let Mary take control of the arms, scooping whatever vegetables she wants onto our plate.
“Don’t get blue cheese again,” Tucker says.
“I’m getting whatever I want.”
“You like ranch. Get ranch.”
Mary says nothing, scooping shredded carrots and radishes, macaroni salad, and pasta. As she gets to the end of the counter, she goes straight for the blue cheese. Tucker fluster-moans and resists, pulling our arm away from the bowl of creamy dressing, dribbling goo all over our breasts.
“You jerk,” Mary yells at him.
She seizes control of the arm and dumps the spoon of chunky dressing on her salad, creating an ooze-lake of white.
“Not too much,” Susan says to Mary, weight-warning as usual, wiping the cheese-slime from the shirt.
Mary takes us to a table in a dark corner, as she always does when we eat. I wonder if she was ashamed of her weight before she merged with us, always hiding in the back of restaurants so that nobody would see her make a pig of herself. Now she eats salads instead of pizza and cake, trying to keep healthy so that we don’t get as fat as she was.
Tucker cringes as we bite into the blue cheesy lettuce. “How can you like this stuff?”
The eatery is mostly empty. Three bodies are in there, crunching vegetables in the stiff atmosphere. Assemblages usually don’t associate with other assemblages, talking amongst themselves instead, leaving this world a dismal-hushing place.
I wish there would’ve been another way for humans to strive. After the drought of the twenties, our food supply had become so low that it could not support a population of our measure. It was either exterminate the majority of our citizenry or merge multiple beings into a single body. Because the courts chose the latter, most people became miserable. Some think we would have been better off sacrificing our greater half.
Tucker childishly jerks our hand while Mary is trying to eat.
“Don’t be so immature,” Mary says.
He just chuckles and does it again, causing Mary to yell outside of our head, “Stop!” And all of the other assemblages glare at us.
“Sorry,” Arne says to the people in his calm voice.
When we speak through Susan’s vocal chords, you can tell who is doing the speaking. We all speak at a different tone or variation. Arne’s is a deep version of Susan’s voice, mine is a mellow version, Tucker’s is a loud and obnoxious version, and so on. I can’t imagine how she feels when she hears other people speaking with her voice--her mouth is moving, her voice is sounding, but somebody else is doing the talking. I would’ve gone harebrained if they chose my body. Twisted.
As Mary brings the fork to our mouth, Tucker tips it and giggles, scattering food onto our lap. She screams with our voice again, “Cut it out, jerk!”
But he just does it again on the next bite, cackling.
“Now you two stop your arguing, or we’ll take you to the courts to get you removed,” Arne says again in his cool, mellow voice.
“Go ahead and take me to the courts,” she says. “I want out of this body.”
“Yeah,” Tucker says, “I want her out of here too.”
Fred begins gently, “Look. We need to see a counselor for you two. You know that the courts won’t alter assemblages anymore unless the problem is severe. And in that case, they usually terminate the conflicting personality.”
He falters, trying to get his thoughts in order. “We’re going to have to get used to living like this.”
We pause. Nobody knew it was going to be so terrible after we merged. Nobody knew there would be so much conflict. When I was a kid, I got sick of my brother because we shared a room, and we always got into fights. Well, sharing a body is a little more extreme.
“Why don’t we just be terminated?” Susan said.
We all stare at our plate, frozen, surprised to hear the words come from Susan.
She is too beautiful to destroy, too pure. She is our temple.
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” Arne asks.
She shrugs our shoulders. “Why not? What’s the point of living now? We’ve given up our individuality, our souls.” She shakes our head. “You people took over my body, took over my life. I just don’t care anymore. I can’t live like this.”
“Aren’t you afraid of going to hell?” Fred asks.
She shrugs, shakes our head again, but does not respond to his question. Instead she says, “I can’t remember the last time I was happy.”
“We weren’t meant to be happy,” I say.
They are startled to hear my voice in the back of our head. I usually don’t speak at all, silent, listening to their discussions in our mind. I wonder if they forgot I was here, just now remembering, shocked.
I continue, explaining a theory that has been gushing in my thoughts for the past month, “We sacrificed happiness for the sake of our children’s future. The courts knew we would be miserable too, but didn’t have a choice. The human race would’ve been wiped out otherwise.”
“That’s not what they said,” Mary interrupts.
“I know, they lied. They said that it would end loneliness, end anti-social behavior, but they knew it wouldn’t. The only purpose left for us is to make a child, raise it, then wait to die.”
I pause, giving us a bite of salad. And say, “That was the plan they had to decrease our population without literally killing anyone. After we’re gone, things will be back to normal. Mankind will live on because we gave up our happiness.”
They agree with my theory by not speaking, glaring away from the table. The courts said that we would be more happy together, but it was just another illusion over our eyes. I get us up, leave ten dollars for the food, and we go out to the street. It is flurry-cold out here, shivering Susan’s frail skin, and our voice stutters a sigh. Everything is stale, empty as usual, so lifeless. The courts thought they had solved the overpopulation problem, but in doing so they’ve overpopulated our minds.
We decide to take a cab, the only car in the street. We don’t speak a word to the assemblage driving, stuttering to ourselves, dazing. And then we go back to our quiet apartment, sitting numb in the dimness, alone with each other.