The New Natural by Annabel Banks

And then came a change. The alteration in our biology. No viral cause, no leaked radiation, no space-disease hitchhiker on the private shuttles that littered our sky with stars. ‘The world went to shit, and now this?’ the more suspicious muttered, replaying those first videos on repeat until they were removed. ‘Not a coincidence, people.’ The rest of us shook our heads, unconvinced by the idea of political power at the cell level. Maybe in kill-the-terrorist books, expensive sci-fi movies, but not really—not by a species that poisons its own drinking water and leaves its young to starve.

Whatever the reason, we were new. The first to notice the blister on the chest thought nothing of it—an insect bite, a clogged-up pore—and scratched, rubbed, or treated with cream. Some covered with a bandage, so had little warning that the sternum was about to open, the transparent sac flop out, and there was plenty of screaming and ambulances before the doctors and ministers went on tv to explain the what, if not the why.

We tuned in every day, waiting for our turn, and learned that hiding the hole with sticking plasters, papier mâché, would never work. We stayed at home, crying, and when the money ran out, we dried our eyes and cut holes in the front of our clothes, allowing the liquid to pool and gush as we went about our days. Some tried to hide their connections, ashamed of the pumping, the gurgles and waves, and new clothing lines were launched to cash in, tented shirts or redesigned pregnancy dresses, allowing the sac to move around as we shopped, but these soon failed. Without ever breaching the clear membrane, each of the radiant liquids that pulsed and plashed inside our sacs seemed to corrode any cover, staining, at first, and then dissolving, and eventually everyone just dealt with it, polite, at first, and then bored of that, until it became just another body thing—and who’s embarrassed to have a head?

The connections, though. They took some getting used to. We’d noticed at once that when we came close to each other, our sacs responded, shifting in shape, the strongest becoming almost tubular as they reached out to connect. At the slightest touch, the surfaces would meld, and whorls of each other’s colours would shift over, looping up like the sun’s surface in a storm, then spreading out, mingling, altering, until fully absorbed. Old couples woke in the morning with their bubbles completely blended, and so had to add the gentle pulling away to a morning routine of joint-popping stretches, tablets, and teeth. Younger lovers, shy and unsure, made love without facing each other and, when finished, slept back-to-back, cuddling their personal loads, setting discreet alarms to wake early and scoop back any tendrils that had crept over their shoulders in the night.

But we had shit to do, so once again we came round to the idea, and, with the help of a few grassrooters and astroturfers, were soon holding picnics and street parties where we mixed with others, sacs melding and membranes joined. And it’s important to note that there was resistance. For some of us, it felt forced. We would go home afterwards, falling into bed with a shared sense of having expended energy, made an effort. When we mixed with those unlike ourselves, it felt good at the time—and yet, afterwards, there was this slight cloying sense of reward, as though we had done something consciously noble, instead of the new natural.

We knew the feeling was wrong, so we hid this discomfort at our hidden discomfort, trusting our children to do better, knowing we were relics now, the lumbering bones of the past. And so we didn’t mention those times we’d wake in the small hours, gasping with horror as we clutched at our sacs, sure that we’d made a mistake, hurt another or been hurt by them in some way we couldn’t fathom, then fall back into dreams where we ruptured and sprayed, soaking the bed in our good intentions, our inflexibility and fear.

This went on for years before we settled down. Work, worry, creativity and kids took our minds on little loops, returning to the beginning each time the morning alarm rang. And then another shift happened, something unexpected but again natural—or so we told each other, while our suspicious types coughed bullshit into their fists. Whatever the cause, there were some who managed to lay down platelets to coat the inside of the transparency, rendering it filmy, opaque. Eventually, they could barrel their way through a crowded high street and remain untouched, unmingled. The rest of us marvelled at them, disgusted with envy, for they were separate and truly themselves.

They didn’t last long, these new-new naturals. We saw to that. Their bodies were found on waste ground, in canals, in the backs of lorries with doors chained shut. News reports barely covered the deaths and no one was ever charged.

And so we forge on. Health and fashion, as usual, took diverging paths. Vigorous exercise or athletic sex turns our liquids rich, the viscosity increased to almost an emulsion-like consistency. Yet the season’s trends decree liquids be watery and agile: more broth, less soup. Reality stars and socialites pay to be strapped down and spoon fed before events. Parents despair over teens who refuse to move a muscle at the weekend, hoping to get noticed at school. Social media is filled with videos on how to accent the colours of our insides; spinach and mackerel, pineapple and milk, some light self-asphyxiation before we leave the house. And we deal with all this, husbanding our resilience, because everything changing proved that everything can change and we’re terrified of what might happen next.

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Annabel's short fiction collection Exercises in Control is published by Inffux Press.

Twitter: @annabelwrites