Hybrid Love

A man leans against the school brick wall and motions for me to come closer.

"I've got something for you," he whispers loudly.

I try to run, but I'm not moving.

John shakes my sweating body awake.

"You're kicking me," he says, turning the light on. "Who were you talking to?"

"I don't know. I couldn't see. He was wearing a hat."

I wipe tears and stumble down the hall to the bathroom and climb inside the clawfoot. I turn the tap to lukewarm and lay down on my back. The water rises slowly and covers my ears. A giant conch shell surrounds.

I hear John's voice echo and open my eyes.

"Don't fall asleep."

He leans down and kisses my forehead. "I'll call you later."

John isn't my boyfriend, but a boy I brought home from a bar last year. When he walked into my living room he looked confused, then said he had been to my apartment before. He told me I doubled him home last summer and that we wrestled on my Indian carpet until my roommate asked him to leave. Blackouts blurred, save for the bicycle bit.

Shortly after we met, the second time, I told him my story.

I am a hybrid. My mother was abducted and impregnated twenty-nine years ago. The weakness of all aliens is reproduction. Every time they procreate it is a copy of a copy of a copy. Humans offer their zealous love of breeding.

Twenty years earlier, I was kneeling on my bedroom floor, slicing along the crease of a garbage bag. I loved the precision of mother's sewing scissors cutting through the shiny black plastic. I climbed on a chair and stood in front of the window, masking tape in one hand, and bags in my other.

"What are you doing?" my brother asked, opening the door.

"The aliens are coming," I told him. "I need protection."

"With garbage bags?"

"You don't get it."

"They can travel to earth, but they can't tear through plastic?"

He didn't understand. I was happy. I didn't want to leave.

Studies with human hosts began decades ago. I was to stay on earth for a short time, and then return home. Aliens living undetected monitored thousands of us. Their reproductive progress was swift. By the time I was thirteen, all hybrids were deemed E.U. Expired Usefulness. We were abandoned.

At this time patterns of self-destruction began. Starving numbed the sadness, cutting transferred the pain, and drinking suppressed the anger. I didn't want to be on earth anymore. I tried to leave, but was unsuccessful. How many hybrids had failed? I wondered. I kept humans at a distance, but found boys to be curious creatures.

Observational duties were given to hybrid animals. My cat Annabelle began to monitor my emotional patterns. She reported me as a failed hybrid, but a moderately successful human. This gave me hope for survival.

Female hybrids follow three rules when dating. We date men in relationships, men who are non-committal, and men who live far away. Attachments are not encouraged. I strayed once from these rules and felt something incredibly fulfilling, yet ultimately excruciating.

Familiar patterns continued and I wanted to leave again. My concern was Annabelle. Who would monitor her? My brother found me huddled in a closet the day after my attempt. His horrified face convinced me I should never try that again. Annabelle wasn't my only concern. I would miss my earth family too.

Years passed and rules were obeyed.

I speak rarely about hybrids. When I do men think I have a dramatic imagination. John listens and dates other women. He knows I don't want to hear about them. I pose nude for the life drawing classes he teaches at an arts high school and occasionally he comes over after for drinks and a cuddle. Before we went to bed last night, before the nightmare, he spoke of his friend Tommy.

"I told him you're an alien," John said.

"Why?" I groaned. "You don't believe it. Besides, I'm a hybrid, not an alien."

Tommy is a Scotsman, he told me, who loves aliens and happens to live on my favourite street. I agreed to meet John at his friend's place the following night.

I call John and ask him if he'll drive me to Tommy's, but he says he has to drop paintings off at a gallery and will meet me there.

On my way out I look at my monitor and give her a scratch behind the ears. Annabelle is older now and has a protégé, Harold. He is five and still learning, but takes his role seriously. He shadows me dutifully and becomes verbally disenchanted when men are near, John included.

I walk up Brunswick and worry about the rules as I climb the steps to Tommy's front door. He's a self-proclaimed bachelor, but one look around his apartment and I'm not so sure it's a choice. The only thing missing are the bundled piles of newspapers stacked in a maze. If you had a blind crush wouldn't you clean your place before she came over?

Tommy says John is going to be late and I wonder if he'll show up at all.

Conversation flows, drinks follow. He pulls out his collection of alien books and Coast to Coast recordings. I forget the surroundings and tell him my story.

"Do you think you belong to the Tall Whites or the Grays?" he asks.

"The Grays," I say, not sure, but afraid to sound less than expert.

"That's what I thought," he answers. "I noticed the strange curvature of your fingers and the deep grooves in your nails."

I decline his offer of pork rinds and pretzels, accepting another glass of wine.

When I take my cardigan off he asks about my body temperature, and isn't surprised it's higher than most. He's met hybrids before.

This is when I notice he's been inching his way towards me across the couch.

"My mother says I didn't like to be touched," I tell him. "She called me a prickly pear."

He reaches over and strokes my arm.

"You need to move back," I say calmly. "I need space."

"Why? Because you're an alien?"

"No, because I'm human."

This bastard only likes me because he thinks I'm a hybrid. Rushing out, forgetting my sweater, and hailing a cab, I think about the damn rules all the way home.

I take a small steak knife from the cutlery drawer and tightly wrap my fingers round the handle. I pull down and jab its tip into my left forearm before tossing it into the sink. Crawling upstairs, I pass Annabelle stretched out on the landing. Harold is waiting on my bed. I lie beside him and press my head to his soft furry belly. He purrs gently and reports human success is possible.