Which, really, there was. Nita turned back to her newest project and allowed herself a small smile. A pishtaco or a chupacabra would have been better, but she’d still enjoy a zannie.
The first thing she did was empty its pockets. An old-fashioned timepiece, some Brazilian reais (no Peruvian soles though, which was odd), and a wallet. Nita gazed at it a long time before putting it on the tray, unopened. Her mother would have already taken the credit cards and used them to get as much cash as possible before ditching them. The only other things left in the wallet would be identity cards, club memberships—things that would tell her about the person she was dissecting.
Nita had learned a long time ago—you don’t want to know anything about the person whose body you’re taking apart.
Better to think that it wasn’t a person at all. And really—it wasn’t. This was a zannie.
Nita took an elastic and tied her hair back in a puffy attempt at a ponytail. Her hair tended to grow sideways in frizzy kinks instead of down. In the glow of the fluorescent lights, its normally medium-brown color took on an orange tint. No one else thought it looked orange, but Nita insisted—she liked orange.
She put a surgical mask over her mouth, just below her freckle-spattered cheekbones, before putting the goggles on. After snapping on a pair of latex gloves, she rolled her tool set over to the metal slab where the body rested. She slipped her earbuds in and flicked on her Disney playlist.
It was time to begin.
* * *
Nita couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been fascinated by dead things—perhaps because her home was always full of them. As far back as she could remember, her parents had acquired the bodies of unnaturals and sold the pieces on the internet. The darknet, to be specific. Black market body part sellers didn’t just post their items on eBay. That was how you ended up with a short visit from the International Non-Human Police—INHUP—and a long stint in jail.
When Nita was younger, she used to run around the room, bringing her parents empty jars. Big glass ones for the heart, small vials and bags for the blood. Afterward, she’d label them and line them up on the shelf. Sometimes she’d stare at them, pieces of people she’d never met. There was something calming about the still hearts, floating in formaldehyde. Something peaceful. No more beating, no more thumping rhythm and noise. Just silence.
Sometimes, she would look at the eyes, and they would stare back. Direct, open gazes. Not like living people, who flicked their eyes here and there while they lied, who could cram an entire conversation into a single gaze. The problem was, Nita could never understand what they were saying. It was better after people were dead. The eyes weren’t so tricky anymore.
It took Nita all night and the better part of the next day to finish with the zannie, put everything in jars of formaldehyde or freezer containers, and clean the dissection room until it sparkled.
The sun was up, and she didn’t feel tired, so she went to her favorite park on the cliffs overlooking the ocean. Tropical trees with large, bell-shaped flowers covered the benches like a canopy, and blue and white mosaics patterned the wall that prevented people from tumbling over the side of the cliff and into the sparkling waters below. Newspapers sat abandoned on the benches, from tabloids announcing Penelope Alvarez looks twenty at age forty-five. Good skin care or something more “unnatural”? to official news sources with headlines like Should Peru sign into INHUP? The advantages and disadvantages to an extraterritorial police force for unnatural-related incidents.
Peru was one of the only South American countries left that wasn’t a part of INHUP. There were always a few countries on every continent that stayed out so that black market dealers had somewhere to flee when INHUP finally nailed them. Certain people paid politicians handsomely to ensure it stayed that way.
Nita took a seat far away from the other people in the park. Under the shade of a floripondio tree, she cracked open her medical journals on unnaturals.
Sometimes it was frustrating reading them and knowing they were wrong about certain things. While lots of unnaturals were “out” and recognized by the world, most still hid, afraid of public backlash. So when the journals talked about zannies being the only species of unnatural that consumed nontangible things, like pain, Nita wished she could point out that there were creatures who consumed memories, strong emotions, and even dreams. INHUP just hadn’t officially recognized them yet. INHUP was big on doing damage control, and part of trying to decrease racism and discrimination against unnaturals was not telling people just how many types there were.
It also kept people like Nita’s mother from finding out about them. Sometimes.
Nita whiled the afternoon away in the shade of the tree, devouring medical research like candy, until the sun dipped so low there wasn’t enough light to read by.
When Nita got home, she was greeted by a string of expletives.
She crept into the hall, shoulders tight with tension. Her mother could be unpredictable when angry. Nita had been on the receiving end before and wasn’t eager to repeat the experience.
But ignoring her mother was more dangerous, so Nita padded into the kitchen.
“What are you doing?” Nita gaped, staring at the mess.
Her mother tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and gave Nita a wry smile. Around her, empty shipping crates littered the floor, along with packing materials like bubble wrap and Styrofoam worms. A gun sat on the kitchen table, and Nita briefly wondered what it was doing out.
“I want to have the zannie parts shipped out tomorrow. We’ve got something new, and to be frank, this apartment isn’t big enough to hold all the parts.” Her mother flashed her another smile.
Nita was inclined to agree. Her dissection room was already at capacity, and they’d only dissected one zannie. There really wasn’t room for a second body.
“Something new, huh? I take it everything went well, then?”
Nita’s mother laughed. “Do things ever go well with unnaturals that aren’t on the list?”
Among the unnaturals that were public knowledge, there was a list of “dangerous unnaturals”—unnaturals whose continued existence depended on them murdering other people. It wasn’t a crime to kill them in INHUP member countries, it was “preemptive self-defense.” But anything not on the list, the harmless unnaturals (which was most of them, in Nita’s experience), it was very much a crime to kill.
Her mom mostly brought Nita unnaturals on the list. Mostly.
Nita knew her mother had probably killed a lot of not-evil, not-dangerous people and sold them. She tried not to think about it too much, because really, there wasn’t much she could do about it, was there?
Besides, they were always dead by the time they got to Nita. And if they were already dead, it would be a shame to let their bodies go undissected.
Speaking of . . .
“What did you bring back?” Nita asked, weaving through the crates to the fridge, where she took out last night’s leftovers and shoved them into the microwave.
“Something special. I put it in the dissection room.”
Nita felt her fingers twitch, the imaginary scalpel in her hand making a sliding cut through the air, like a Y incision. She couldn’t wait for the slow, relaxing evening, just her and the body. The straight autopsy lines, the jars full of organs watching over her, like her own weird guardian angel.