Free Lucid Dreaming by Lisa Morton Page A

part of “the family” now.
    And then there were the women.
    I’d provided them with enough Prolixin so that they could’ve woken up all those dreaming women, but the truth is Mama just didn’t want to. She used every excuse from Prolixin effecting the unborn babies to “keeping the menfolk happy,” but I think the truth is she just didn’t want other women around. They were somehow a danger to her.
    I was.
    Because I’d considered offing her.
    This place wouldn’t be so bad with someone else in charge. It didn’t even have to be me—it could be Colby. Someone who’d let the human race come back better than before.
    But I realized that even if I could kill Mama and get away with it, the rest of ’em here would never listen to anyone else. After all, they’d had a chance once to listen to somebody else, and they’d shot her instead. They actually liked life under Mama, probably a lot more than they’d liked it before. They’d been poor white trash before; now they were rich. Still white trash, but rich, with all the steaks and Garth Brooks CDs and pink wallpaper they wanted.
    Fuck it. If this was the future of humanity, then let it die out.
    Teddy, of course, was scared all the time and miserable. He was losing too much weight because he wouldn’t eat meat and was too anxious to eat anything else. Their little cruelties and taunts were becoming more and more open, and I knew it wouldn’t be long before he’d either blow up at one of them or they’d just decide it was time for a little tractor accident. We’d been happy and healthy out on the road, and could be again.
    So I thought about escape.
    I know you’re probably thinking, Just walk away, just sneak out one night and go! Well, it wasn’t that easy. For one thing, we were in the middle of bugfuck nowhere; walking away was out of the question. That left horse or car, and I didn’t know how to ride a horse. And I wasn’t anxious to learn—truthfully, the big animals scared me silly.
    That left car. And keys. And Hank.
    Hank kept the car keys in a lockbox attached to a wall in the kitchen. He was the only one who could open that box. Sure, I considered just smashing it, but there was always someone in the kitchen. And Hank never went without a gun.
    We couldn’t just go without some supplies. Food we could get, but the Prolixin was kept in Mama’s office, and she locked that door when she wasn’t in there.
    And then there was the spy.
    The pinch-faced woman who’d watched us the night of that first dinner was still watching us. I’d learned her name was MaryKay , and her gig was to curry favor with Mama by narcing . Seemed she wasn’t very good at any particular work, but she was guaranteed her daily Prolixin by ratting out everybody else.
    So, you can see why we needed a plan that involved more than just a long stroll out of there.
    First, I figured out the Prolixin :
    Mama locked the door to her office, sure…but not the window. I’d noticed it a couple of times, and was pretty sure she never locked it.
    I waited one night until it was very late, all the women were in our little dormitory, and I heard nothing but the sounds of peaceful breathing around me; then I got up, moving very quietly. The door would squeak a little when I opened it, but if anyone bothered to ask I could say I was just going to the outhouse.
    Nobody said anything.
    I did cross to the outhouse, just in case MaryKay was sneaking a peek at me; I even went in and used it. When I came out, I looked around, then ran over to the main house and found the window for Mama’s office. It was one of those old-fashioned kind of windows that slid up, and so I grabbed the sides and pushed. Sure enough it went up, without a sound. I moved it up so I could even stick my head in the office, and saw moonlight glinting off the bottles of Prolixin .
    I didn’t take any