Defective
By Sharon Boddy
()
About this ebook
The first thing Mixer knew with certainty was that he was hungry. The feeling grew more intense each day until it became unbearable and Mixer began to lash out. Quietly, steadily he ate away at his enemy and, in a few weeks, where there had been two, now there was only one.
History had been erased. The land had been eroded and the global population had crashed. Into this new world came an evolutionary change, a genetic mutation that could make humans perform in ways they'd never done before. Those who survived learned to fear the abilities of those who carried the gene and banished any who displayed the slightest difference. As time went on, the gene appeared to die out. But it wasn't entirely gone.
In a world still largely ignorant and illiterate, nine children struggle to survive, sometimes even against their own.
Sharon Boddy
Freelance writing, editing and the research that comes with that pays the bills and, luckily for me, is often pretty darned interesting. I write mostly about environmental issues. Sewage sludge and its beneficial uses may not sound like your cup of, ahem, tea, but it's all in the way you look at things.Fiction has always been part of my life. My mum read stories to me every night until I was old enough to read for myself, tucked under the covers with the flashlight. The first thing I can remember writing is a traditional Roses are red poem for my mother when I was about four years old. We had an old manual typewriter and I banged it out on a thin piece of paper. She kept that scrap for years.Turn-ons: energy efficiency, a great smile, discoveryTurn-offs: working in fake teams, cruelty to spiders, lima beans
Related to Defective
Related ebooks
Tommytown 2: Helen's Song Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAnimal Nature: A Gray Wolf Pack Paranormal Romance Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPerfect: A Thriller That Will Grab You By Your DNA Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Virus: A Love Story Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Amelioration Expedition: Spaceship Lyra Logs, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Fair Haired Boy: Or, The Sound of a Lost Voice Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsStories Not for Children Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAmazon: the Twelfth Queen Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSisters Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Rough Justice Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Crazy About You Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEver Since Eve (The Keeping Secrets Series, Book 1) Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Send Cardinals Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPet Sitter Extraordinaire: The Apprentice Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsOf Starlight and Plague Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFamily in Savannah Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Burro's Colt: The Third Book in the Series Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGemini Blood Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLas Mujeres Misteriosas Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRag & Bones: Kindred Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Realm of Heartella Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRose of Dutcher's Coolly Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFolklore: A Field Guide Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBorn of the Wolf Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFalling for Her Bad Boy Boss Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIMMACULATE DECEPTION: A FIONA FITZGERALD MYSTERY Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wolf's Capture: Kodiak Point, #5 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dowry Bride Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Frek and the Elixir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Science Fiction For You
The Alchemist: A Graphic Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ocean at the End of the Lane: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Is How You Lose the Time War Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silo Series Collection: Wool, Shift, Dust, and Silo Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Annihilation: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Frankenstein: Original 1818 Uncensored Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sarah J. Maas: Series Reading Order - with Summaries & Checklist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Warrior of the Light: A Manual Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Psalm for the Wild-Built Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Perelandra: (Space Trilogy, Book Two) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5How High We Go in the Dark: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England: Secret Projects, #2 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flowers for Algernon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sunlit Man: Secret Projects, #4 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Institute: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Authority: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wool: Book One of the Silo Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rendezvous with Rama Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Who Have Never Known Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas: A Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Deep Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Going Postal Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dust: Book Three of the Silo Series Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Roadside Picnic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dark Tower: And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Troop Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Camp Zero: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Defective
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Defective - Sharon Boddy
Defective
A novella
By Sharon Boddy
Published at Smashwords
Smashwords Edition License Notes
Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download their own copy from their favourite authorized retailer. Thank you for your support.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published by Boddy Language
Copyright ©2015 Sharon Boddy
ISBN: 978-0-9948880-0-6
Table of Contents
Winter
Summer
Autumn
Winter
Spring
Summer
Autumn
About the Author
Acknowledgements
The Children
Porkchop, 18
Santa, 17
Titania, 16
Forest, 14
Narrow, 12
Bull, 11
Jones, 7
Jelly, 7
Mixer, 18 months
The Adults
Ma
Pa
The Landlord
PC Pierre
Pater
Rank
Gaines
Mrs. Nibbs
Marvellous
Mrs. Baker
Selected sources from the reference library of PC Pierre (P), Deloran County
Reference Code: G32
Title: The Upheaval's Geologic Legacy, Arthur Pawli, pub. 2417
See summary by PC Pierre (P), Deloran County, 5.45.22
P3: First came the vibrations, like something large and heavy falling close by. The vibrations would have grown stronger and stronger within minutes or hours and the ground would have begun to shake. Buildings and infrastructure collapsed, roads were buried. Presumably, many of the old countries' populations were drowned by buckling rivers, lakes and oceans; in other places, mountains shook apart, firing bits into the air. Whole populations — human, animal, insect, bird, plant — were obliterated in less than a day along with many important cultural and historical artifacts, now lost to time.
Reference Code: M3
Title: Human Reactions to Long-term Infection Exposure, Drs. Winj, P., Estelle, F., Kathra, R., pub. 2478
See summary by PC Pierre (P), Deloran County, 11.27.22
P114: In conclusion, it is not possible to isolate the genetic components of the defect, previously linked to contaminants unleashed during the Upheaval. Data suggests that the infection itself, which is no longer fatal, recurs every thirty to forty years and with each reoccurrence, the defective gene mutates; however, no two genes studied to date follow the same mutation pattern. The defect also occurs in non-infection years but there has been a marked decline in the number of reported cases in the last twenty years. This could suggest that its lessening appearance in new births is a signal that both the infection and the mutation are waning, or that social or other factors, such as non-reporting behaviours are involved, which are outside the scope of this study. The majority of the defects that do appear are minor in nature.
Reference Code: PR402
Police Crime Summary Report, Dated: 12.33.42
Reporting Officer: PC Marsellum Peach
Prisoner Name: Martha New
Prisoner Number: F89
Residence: Ferguston, Deloran County
Charge: Infanticide; blunt force trauma. Prisoner claims her new born son was defective and attacked her. CX: Confession.
Reference Code: PR433
Police Crime Summary Report, Dated: 1.4.43
Reporting Officer: PC Marsellum Peach
Prisoner Number: F89
Notes: Prisoner held in the local till weather clears and can be transferred to Andrastyne.
Reference Code: PR437
Police Crime Summary Report, Dated: 1.7.43
Reporting Officer: PC Marsellum Peach
Prisoner Number: F89
Notes: Prisoner found dead in cell by hanging. Burial arranged. CX: Morgue.
Winter
The first thing Mixer knew with certainty was that he was hungry. The feeling grew more intense each day until it became unbearable and Mixer began to lash out. Quietly, steadily he ate away at his enemy and, in a few weeks, where there had been two, now there was only one.
Summer
There’s something wrong with Mixer,
Ma said one night in bed.
There’s something wrong with all our kids,
Pa yawned. He rolled over and looked at his wife. She looked serious. And old. They kept their voices low; the children slept above them in the loft.
This is different.
Ma sat up. Maybe it’s what you said, that it was twins.
Ma had been nervous most of her pregnancy with Mixer, the youngest and ninth of her and Pa’s kids. Ma said the number nine was bad luck. Nothing good comes from nines, she would say. Ma said a lot of things like that and Pa had learned to ignore most of them.
When she was five months pregnant, Pa listened to her belly and pronounced twins. Ma wasn’t so sure, but Pa had some experience with this, he said, pointing to Jelly and Jones, their twins. Ma kept her thoughts to herself. Either way, she thought, twins or a single, this'll be the last one. She’d finally perfected the recipe that would see to that. When Ma’s labour was over, however, only Mixer had shown up. Pa poked around up there for a bit, perplexed by the absence of infant. He had distinctly heard two heartbeats.
Pa sat up. The moon waned in the sky outside their window.
Different how?
Each of their children possessed at least one defect, although Pa never used that word. He called them talents. Ma knew them for what they were: trouble. Anyone different, anyone who could do something others couldn't was shunned or worse. She and her mother and father had been kicked out of so many towns when she was a child she couldn't remember half their names.
Her father had been a painter but despite his best efforts to keep his defect under control, his work on barns, houses and fences stood out. Designs within the paint would appear, faint at first, the outline of things: trees, women, or the sky at night. The paintings would then take on deeper lines and colours would appear and disappear. Her mother had been a healer and had taught her daughter what she knew of medicine. She would try to help people but they were afraid of her. They would always be found out and run out of town; sometimes they were beaten. They moved from place to place and her parents waited until Ma turned twenty and then left her in Battery. Alone, they thought, she'd stand a better chance.
She went to work for the Landlord of Battery, part of a group of young men and women hired at slave wages to work a pearl apple orchard after the former owner died. There she met and married her husband and started having his children. Within a year all the other workers had gone; the two of them and their growing family had worked the land ever since.
Her defect was the ability to see under the earth. She knew what a plant's root system looked like without ever needing to dig it out. In the early years at the orchard she often saw things buried among the trees or near the barn but if she did dig them up, she did it at night when the children and Hap were asleep. She never told anyone about it. Some things, like the skeletal remains of a baby buried in the wild rose bush behind the shed, were best left as they were.
She had been raised to hate and fear herself and others like her, but most of all to be afraid of being found out. She couldn't turn back time but she could make life easier for her children. She could give them a stable home, keep them safe and protected; few people knew they were here. She taught them, ruthlessly at times, not to display their talents, not even to each other. The children were only allowed to use them for orchard work or when specifically told to.
Their eldest, Porkchop was able to see the minutiae of her surroundings at a glance. She could spot the first sign of life or blight. Her memory was astonishing and in terms of her daily duties Porkchop's mind inevitably ran far ahead of everyone else's. Ma sometimes suspected that Porkchop knew more about how to run the orchard than she did but her oldest child, besides being sensible and obedient to a fault, never contradicted any of Ma's decisions.
Forest could predict the weather. Since he was a baby Forest had been fascinated by insects and plants and water and how they behaved in different types of weather. He'd studied their habits and learned that nature could tell him everything he needed to know so long as he listened and observed. Forest also had an innate sense of the seasons, how they would unfold, and what challenges they would bring. He was indispensable in scheduling some of the most important orchard tasks.
Ma hated Santa's talent because she feared what could happen to her if people found out. Santa could sing. Musicians and singers and artists were among the most hated of defectives. They didn't do anything useful or productive; they didn't grow food or catch fish or trap animals. They didn't fell timber or plant trees; they didn't build things or fix things.
Bull had always been large for his age. He could track even the smallest game from miles away. Ma believed that her son's keen sense of smell came from her being bitten by a stray dog when she was pregnant with him. It wasn't unusual for feral curs to stray onto the property in those days. Their numbers dropped dramatically after they began feasting too much on the local deer population and the Landlord thought it would be both fun and useful to institute a dog-killing contest. The tenant farmer who killed the most dogs got double his salary for the month. Pa never won. The contest ran for six years until the dogs had been almost wiped out.
Narrow was worse than her husband for taking things apart but, unlike her husband, her middle child put things back together again. When he was about nine months old he woke up the household taking apart his crib. The slats had given way and he'd gone straight down, landing on his bottom. When Pa brought his tool box to fix the crib the next day, Narrow had crawled over to the box, rummaged for a moment and brought out a screwdriver. Narrow could almost always fix or build or create anything with whatever resources were available.
Titania was Ma's special daughter.
Twins were sometimes considered defective simply because they were twins. Most people did accept that twins existed naturally in nature, but identical girl-boy twins, like Jelly and Jones, were unusual and therefore highly suspicious. They were so alike that it wasn't until their hair began to grow that Ma began to cut her son's but not her daughter's hair so that she could tell them apart.
Jones never learned to crawl. One day, as he sat cross legged on the floor of the press house he had hopped across the room. Ma had been standing at the pressers, enormous square wooden boxes with tight wire mesh-topped lids that were pressed down onto the pearl apple mash. The juice flowed through the boxes into a trough that was connected to a pipe to the fermentation vat. She thought she had closed the press house door but she'd suddenly felt a breeze by her ankles. She looked around and found Jones in one corner, gnawing on his thumbnail. He hopped back to where he'd been. She'd seen a blur across her vision and her son then reappear on the other side of the room.
Jelly had learned to talk early. At six months she was able to tell her mother, in a few words, what she needed, a diaper change or food. Her defect deepened the day she found a plastic bag caught in one of the pearl apple trees in the orchard. The bags were useful things if they didn’t have many holes in them, but their numbers had dwindled with each passing year.
Ma was teaching Jelly to forage for medicinal and edible plants and had taken the four-year old into the woods one autumn day for another lesson. Jelly had the right temperament for it. Patient. Observant. Curious.
On their return home, the press house and barns in the distance, Jelly caught sight of the bag. She carefully untangled it and smoothed it out on the ground.
Made in China,
she said.
Stop messing about with that,
said Ma impatiently. She needed to start supper; needed to make sure that Santa started supper.
Jelly continued to study the bag. It had a line of black marks on it.
That’s what it says. Made in China.
Ma grabbed her by the arm and hauled her through the orchard and home. Jelly held onto the bag the entire way and by the time they arrived at the house Ma was fuming. She barked an order for Santa to get dinner started. Santa, who was already cutting up potatoes and carrots and parsnips, looked up, saw her mother's expression, and ducked her head back down to her task.
Ma grabbed a short pearl apple switch from its hook on the wall, put Jelly over her knee and gave her four sharp whacks. She had beaten all of her children this way, starting from a young age. She used it to remind them not to show off; she believed it would make them as strong and resilient as the trees they tended.
After they'd eaten supper, Jelly started to talk about the bag again. Ma reached for the switch but Pa interrupted.
What’s that?
It talks to me,
Jelly said, taking the neatly folded bag from her pocket. Made in China.
She pointed to a line on the bag. Fifteen per cent post consumer plastic.
What’s China?
Narrow asked.
Ma and Pa ignored him.
Pa sat back and scratched his chin. He knew it was writing but he couldn't understand how Jelly could read it. He recognized some words, mostly place names that others had pointed out to him: Piggy Gristle, Hap Road, Battery, Delora.
Ma couldn't read