It had been announced several days later that they were looking for him. But he already knew. From the moment he awoke on the day Janie dissolved, before she ever told him she felt unusual, strange and funny inside like she would crack open and burst all over their newly tiled kitchen floor, Thomas knew they would come, soon enough.
The men in orange were a strange breed, they were not clones but they had the same empty look in their eyes, the same haunted lifelessness that made them seem like ghouls, that made their cold soulless gaze crawl under his skin and turn his marrow to ice. Thomas loved Janie, and the ghoulish clan of orange-clad faceless non-beings did not understand love. He did not understand love. Janie probably did not understand love, and yet she loved him back.
It must have happened the day Thomas came home from the factory and decided never to go back. He told Janie as soon as he stepped in the door.
“I’m done. I’m not going back.”
“Oh?”
Her eyes met his, but her fingers kept flying, knitting a perfect little sweater for a perfect little baby boy.
“Yeah.”
“I see.”
This was their usual manner of conversation lately, crisp and to-the-point, and rarely very informative. She had not questioned him further, and he had gazed at her sadly, knowing that she had slipped far beyond his reach.
The truth of the matter was that she had begun to crack, deep inside, and he knew it long before she did. There was no baby boy, the sweater was for a figment of her imagination, and Thomas knew Janie would never realize that her pregnancy was of her own creation and had no basis in reality.
He had married Janie the day after they graduated from college, and they had an outdoor wedding in June, just the way she had always wanted it. She had been radiant that day, with beautiful brown curls framing her round, bright face, clutching a bouquet of lilies.
There was only a shadow of that girl present in Janie’s face now, and it flitted across in such short flashes that Thomas could never see it long enough to recognize it before it was too late. Her hair hung limply in front of her eyes, revealing gaunt hollows in her cheeks, under her sunken, still startlingly blue eyes. Thomas loved her as much as always, and that made every day feel like a betrayal, like a best friend who stabs you in the back with a cleaver when you’re just about to tell him how much he means to you.
Thomas was not quite sure exactly when Janie started believing a child was on the way. They had slept in the same bed, as always, but had not touched each other in almost a year. Thomas had started to forget what Janie’s body looked like under her crumpled clothes that no longer matched. Janie did not seem to notice the significance of this fact.
She had started by painting the spare room in pastels, squiggles and streaks that made no recognizable pattern. She thought it was beautiful, although it looked nothing like how a baby’s room should look. He did not know if Janie really could not see what the room truly looked like, or if she did not care.
Next she had made the rounds of their immediate neighborhood, announcing proudly and happily, almost girlishly, that she and Thomas were expecting a new addition to their little home, and inviting them all to come and see the room that she had arranged for their darling boy. They all congratulated Thomas when they saw him next, and he smiled obligingly. He did not know what to say.
