Seam Allowance

Seam Allowance

They take us in groups of two hundred and six—never more, never less. The guards say it matches the bones in the human body.

No one laughs.

The place runs on clean counts. The smell hits first—sweet and wrong, clinging to the throat before the walls appear.

I wake inside it. Belts and rails slide into focus, feeding us toward machines that shriek and snap like joints tearing loose.

Black lanes don’t return you. White ones do.

They have never miscounted.

Then I see him.

Three lengths ahead. One arm pinned under his chest, hair fallen across his forehead—the way I used to brush it back.

“Michael.”

The noise drops away. Everything narrows to him.

I wrench free of the belt, slam into the rail, force through the shouting guards. I drag him up. He’s heavier than he should be—love turned solid when there’s no time left.

I get him onto my back and run.

Above us, Haws walks the catwalk, tapping a baton against his palm, setting the pace. His glance sorts people like numbers already decided.

Ahead, the lanes split—black and white meeting at a narrow seam.

I don’t think.

I jump.

Michael slips from my grip, hits the seam, teeters—

—and the belt stops.

Not a stutter. A decision.

Silence slams down.

Haws raises the baton.

The belt moves again.

Michael falls into white.

A Washer checks his tag. Frowns. Then nods.

“Proceed.”

Black takes me.

A guard grips my shoulder. “Don’t make us drag you. You put him where he belongs.”

The recycler screams ahead—a red light bleeding through the metal, heat pressing into my face.

At the last moment, the belt jerks, pushing me into a side corridor.

A Washer waits, hand on a lever.

“You sure?”

“No.”

He pulls it anyway.

Pressure hits—weightless and crushing. Memory scrapes through bone. A nurse says, “You’re doing well, Mom.”

I try to hold onto a name.

It slips.

Silence.

I drop to my knees, a towel around my shoulders.

“Stand still," the Washer says.

Haws waits in the doorway.

“We remember jumpers,” he says. “Two hundred and six. Always.”

I look at him.

“There was…” I start.

Nothing follows.

“Correction has been made,” Haws says.

The Washer looks away.

I walk past them into the outside air.

The white line empties nearby.

A boy steps out—hair wet, eyes searching.

He sees me.

Relief breaks across his face.

He runs.

I catch him, arms tight around my ribs.

I hold him.

He’s shaking.

“Mom,” he says.

The word lands wrong.

I pull back just enough to see his face.

Same eyes. Same mouth.

Nothing behind them that I recognize.

“You took longer than expected,” he says.

His eyes lift—to me.

Something like an apology.

Haws’s baton taps once above us.

Correct.

Michael’s grip doesn’t loosen.

“Mom,” he says again, more carefully.

Like he’s practicing it.

For twenty heartbeats, nothing moves.

I hold him anyway.