Chattel

By S E Holmes

In a divided future were the social order is enforced by an intra-dermal ID chip, the only way seventeen-year-old slum-born thief, Cassius, can keep above throttling poverty in the Crates and earn enough to fix his sick little sister, is a generous bid on his auction day for fertility conscription.
Dragged along on her sister’s auction day, his privileged opposite, Joebi, just wants to avoid an event she views as barbaric, having opposed the Chattel Contract her whole life. Imagine her embarrassment, when in a rare impulsive act, she saves Cas from vengeful gangers and certain imprisonment by bidding on him. Now Joebi’s bought a boy, whatever will she do with him? Such mismatched unions always fail.
But this catastrophe − binding a straight-laced loner to a charismatic, streetwise Crater − is just the beginning of their troubles. And Joebi has a secret, the unravelling of which threatens to expose a plan set in motion centuries before that will hasten the end of the dying world. Racing from opulence to his desperate shantytown, where the environment is as deadly as its residents, survival depends on Cas and Joebi overcoming their differences and fighting together to uphold a system they despise. Or witness the passing of humanity and all they love.

• Language: English
• Publisher: S E Holmes
• Release date: Dec 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463673324

S E Holmes

The fact the real world is not as appealing as the ones I create was obvious in kindergarten when I ran away from school to have a chat with Santa, triggering a police search. My imaginary friend, Wendy, who often came in handy to eat my peas, generously took the blame.

Book preview

Other Novels by S E Holmes available at online book retailers:

The Crone’s Stone (Sacred Trinity Trilogy – Excerpt at the end of Shutter)

The Hidden Key (Sacred Trinity Trilogy)

Dominion

Brink (Maverick Duology – Excerpt at the end of Chattel)

Chattel (Excerpt at the end of Shutter)

Trouble With Angels

Short Stories and Novellas:

A Darker Shade of Grey

Sleek Comes the Night

Shutter

Coming soon:

The Keeper’s Secret (Sacred Trinity Trilogy)

Rift (Maverick Duology)

For more content please visit:

www.seholmesauthor.com

Copyright © 2018 SueEllen Holmes

Smashwords Edition

Table of Contents

Other Novels by S E Holmes

Frontispiece

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Excerpt from Brink

1

I am gold in a tarnished age and today, I go to auction. Like the few other boys alive to their eighteenth year, my family’s future depends on how well I scrub up. A future not shrouded by the fug of burning garbage and unwashed bodies crammed so tightly, we drink each other’s sweat. A future free of hunger and sickness and bad hygiene that hurtles away with every welt and laceration.

It’s just the annoying issue of Vera’s boot crushing my ribcage, the force of her kick bouncing my skull on the tarmac. I guarantee, a head bash doesn’t bestow anything as pretty as stars, more a comet screaming through one’s cranium. Besides, I might enjoy those distant sparkles, so hard to glimpse in this towering ghetto on the edge of living. Instead, more familiar black threatens. If I let awareness snuff out, I’m another corpse on surrounding trash heaps waiting incineration.

My filter has flown from my face, belonging now to the mob clamouring for my hide. Gone, too, are my goggles. Sooty residue coats everything here in a toxic dust to be avoided in favour of living beyond the teens. The choking reek of smouldering rubbish is the stench of despair.

In the head.

Scramble that pretty face.

The news I’m up for auction has spread. I should have known they’d try to brand me and extort a percentage. A rookie mistake on a morning with even less allowance for them. The fateful hour of midday when the gavel drops is too close with so many chores still to do. Seconds contract, filled with all the things I could have done better.

I loll groggily on my back, kidding myself I’m plotting a brilliant retaliation. Vera’s southside Craters circle us, jeering and offering advice their pack leader – whose muscled bulk out-bids mine by about ten tonne – really doesn’t need. The other news of the day that I’m on the cusp of a fatal beating is sluggish to reach gnat-like drones swarming the highways overhead. Still, it won’t be long before one of the useless spies hovers above chanting move it along enough times to bore us into submission, but peacekeepers with their Tasers will come too late for me.

This is no day for ladders, you skanky ranker, I wheeze, fighting the fog in my skull. Now get off!

The suffocating pressure on my chest grows and she bends low to display a row of teeth etched floral in perma-squid black. It looks like they’re rotting, probably are. Her dreadlocks prickle my bare arm like spider legs, her snarl moist and hot in my ear.

No one says ‘no’ to me. She raises her head for dramatic flair and yells, "It’s the perfect day. Cassius Quist."

Her girls applaud and whoop, voices tinny through an assortment of re-breather masks. So now she knows my private name, not the number assigned to me at school. Apparently, psychopaths are decent at hacking records. As long as she doesn’t know where we live. Our address is supposed to be top-level restricted. We go to great lengths to keep it that way. A forest of scruffy canvas joggers blocks my path to freedom.

Wouldn’t it be wiser, I choke out, to keep my face pretty, make more money that way? I have no intention of giving these leeches a cent.

Your face is my billboard.

She roars laughter and her sycophants follow suit. They wear their colours with pride in the Crates, inked by each other and metalled to the eyeballs with scrapyard junk to advertise membership in the meanest gang by a tolerance for pain. They’ll do anything for the pissweak perks of a raised profile.

Need to send a message. And just in case you get any ideas of rebellion, when you’re gone we’ll be paying that sweet little sister of yours a visit. She leers at me. Maybe, Sunni can go. She’s my best talker.

They do know where I live. Sunni talks with the point of her knife.

Threatening my sister is Vera’s second mistake. While she’s busy gloating, I lunge and hook her behind a knee the thickness of a girder – the giant variety fixing pre-fabbed crates in teetering stacks so high, night here’s almost the same as day – and heave her to join me splayed on cracked, steaming bitumen. She makes a satisfying oof, but then ruins it all by curling to strike me double-booted in the nose when I roll over and fumble to pin her.

My head snaps on my neck. A white-hot needle of pain tears another hole through my senses. Crunched bone accents cheers echoing this sliver of free zone, an asphalt rink the size of a trailer set aside for ‘recreation.’ Blood arcs a decorative splatter across the legs of the Southside girls’ church-issued denim jumpsuits. She’s uglied up my nose for certain.

I run my tongue over my gums to check I’ve not swallowed a tooth and find a ragged hole on the inside of my cheek that’s the source of the metallic ooze filling my mouth. And I’m on my back again.

I’m not sure this is what the authorities had in mind for leisure. It used to be a much bigger park or a city tennis club, fossils from a world with plenty of land to waste on well-mannered pastimes. A mean square of sky wavers so far above, it seems no bigger than a washed-out pixel. Hacking a gob of salty warmth rips fresh pain through my frontal lobe, but darkness will not win. Passing out is a luxury today, of all days.

Everyone here knows fists are just as good for sport as racquets. Next to me, Vera’s still winded and straining to hoist that mass upright. Although I don’t have a racquet or a bat handy right now, this is my single chance to teach her to bully equals in muscle and homicidal tendencies. It’s too much to hope she’d stop picking on people altogether.

I guess she and her crew are responsible for most of the robberies at the local food-drop charities recently. I’ve had to raid the supply trucks of vitamin powder more often. It’s getting riskier now their security’s armed. They hoard the oranges and don’t care how many extra starve to death or get the blotch and lose their teeth. I have no proof, but the belief helps ease the guilt over what I’m about to do to her.

I reveal gore-smeared teeth in approximation of a grin, flipping to nail her long hair beneath my shoulder. Suckers generally don’t expect a punch from the floor, which is exactly what I do, exploding to pound her sufficiently hard to break her cheekbone. My knuckles blaze, jarring to my elbow. Her head bounces like one of those tennis balls of old. She howls in shock. Seems she’s not enjoying stars, either.

Before Vera figures what sort of fight she’s in – no-holds-barred dirty – I grab the bullring she’s wearing, tearing it from the cartilage between her nostrils. She shrieks again and clamps her fingers to her ruined nose.

You should have taken me out up front.

Tossing the flesh-chunked hoop into the crowd, I don’t squander my single chance watching them scatter after it, and jump to my feet. Poverty is the ultimate motivation to recycle. I take off in a sprint, my bruised body complaining, aware of how fast they’ll come after me in a big murderous wave.

The main crew are assembled, twenty of the cut-throat fems soon on the hunt for my scalp. Vera will probably wear it for a hat, clotted hair and all. Regardless of the pretence of protection from the authorities, it’s not hard around here, even for those retrogrades, to locate a man on the run.

She screams nasally in my wake. You’re gonna die, sperm! I don’t care if you’re registered special, I’ve got friends. I’ll skin you, the last thing I do.

A vision flashes of her slicing the chip from my forearm, crisping up the excess skin over a kero burner in their crumbling, cavernous lair, and shoving it down my throat. It’s a reflex to clamp my jaw and run faster, tearing north into the gloomy canyon of crates, north towards home, each footfall a stiletto to my damaged face.

After ten minutes, the shouts of my pursuers fade behind until all I hear is the whistled intake of my breathing. I slip between struts of the scaffold to hide and give the hammering of my shattered-egg skull a chance to ease. In the distance, the move-it-along mantra of the tardy drone resonates over sky towers.

It’s gloomy and stifling beneath the Crates. An odour of cats’ piss pervades, but the coppery smell of my blood offers competition. Gingerly patting my nose, the update is not good. At least all my teeth stay rooted to my gums.

Above, bottom floor inhabitants stomp about and conversation filters through the thin veneer. The structure is raised several metres from the ground to avoid rising damp, which can dissolve reinforced cardboard to grey mush in a matter of months. Summer monsoons provoke a mix of dread and the reprieve of plentiful water.

Several buildings have come down lately. At least the flattened residents died well hydrated. Pre-fab companies have never found a solution to beat relentless nature, even with chemical treatments likely to melt the tissue from a Crater’s bones. Fatal housing kind of defeats the point, though.

That’s the roller-coaster existence of the Crates for you. Fate extends one hand to help you up, while slapping you down with the other.

A mangy tom slinks into view and growls a warning at me, jaundiced eyes glinting from the shadows a metre away. But they keep the rat population at bay so we mostly leave them be. No one wants a resurgence of the plague. Unless their numbers need culling.

Shoo! Or I’ll put feline on tonight’s menu. I sound like Vera minus the insanity, dull D’s where crisp T’s belong.

Anyway, it’s an idle threat. Craters must be fussy when it comes to an extra source of protein. You can never tell a seething reservoir of virus, likely to result in blood-flecked frothing at the mouth or liquefied lungs. Luck is on my side the cat’s not a rabies-riddled canine.

Admittedly, it’s hard to be grateful. An extensive schedule of vaccinations proves the authorities are as useless at combating viruses, as housing the populace in something other than cardboard coffins.

Go on! Get.

With a half-hearted hiss of defiance, the cat disappears. Hopefully, he won’t return with friends to turn the tables. A single fight to the death’s plenty for one day. And even the most emaciated, uninfected wild dog can take a limb as easily as bare their fangs.

I dredge up the courage to check if risking this lousy shortcut has been worth it. What other choice was there? Skirting Vera’s territory by taking the southern boundary would have stolen hours dedicated to finding enough water for a wash, and my little sister needs her medicine.

Medicine that would get me arrested should one of those meddlesome drones dive down for a closer look. I pray to some unspecified god the vial of capsules for Salem is whole in my shirt pocket. I don’t know why. I proved years ago praying here is impractical.

Beneath my probing, blood-sticky fingers, Salem’s enzymes are crushed, five capsules broken apart, the contents mixed with pellet gel. They cost me a week’s trade in pilfered vitamins. The loss will cost Salem a whole lot more.

My head droops, overcome by the weight of this grind-you-to-dust place where survival is a fleeting triumph won by the best thief, a fresh misery served up each day. The rising throb of my nose suggests it’s broken. I must look a sight. Brawling with Vera has ruined my chance at a successful auction, which is exactly the revenge she intended.

And shattered my mother’s last hope.

2

The heroine in all such stories flees for the border. From where she loiters out in the hall, Joebi imagines the frame on the other side of the door is frontier land gifting freedom from this day’s tyranny. The posse will search her laboratory downstairs, never expecting she’d hide in her abandoned bedroom. She’s grudgingly left Powder in the lab to make the ruse look authentic. Her rabbit is never far from her side.

Within the bedroom, her sister, Shara, and Elka, her sister’s dim-bulb bestie, ogle at a digital life-sized parade of semi-naked boys oiled and tanned in gold lamé cod-pieces, or leather groin cups like gladiators of ancient Rome. Muscles bunch and flex in lingering freeze-frame. Rippling torsos, clenched buttocks, and broad hairless backs compete with over-bleached teeth and shining locks in the act of slow-motion flicks.

The scrolling montage is so crystal clear, it is as though the boys are present. Joebi has seen it all before. The voyeurs are loud and tipsy, even though mid-morning sunshine scarcely paints the polished marble at her bare feet. Elka’s voice drips lust.

Oh, yeah. Look at those pecs.

Why do they bother to dress them? Shara giggles. How are we supposed to make an informed decision when all the goods aren’t on display?

Maybe the auction house will let us touch before we buy. Pause that one. Spin him and show me the behind view.

Today’s is a special closed auction for the children of the wealthy elite. Nothing but the best for the heirs to the Chromoceuticals fortune. All across the city similar events are held for lesser mortals.

Steeling her nerve, Joebi tiptoes past Shara’s room, not daring to look lest she jinxes herself. If she doesn’t see them, maybe they won’t see her. Musk perfume loaded with pheromones is so heavy on the air, a chemical tang coats her tongue.

Judging by an increase in babble, Elka favours blondes. Magnify. Eww. That makes his nostrils huge. I’m not over fond of a man with large nostrils.

You’re so fussy. Pan out and they won’t be as large. Looks like you can crawl in there.

Hmm, I want to crawl in somewhere, that’s for defs.

The girls collapse in laughter. Those poor boys could hardly be called dressed. Joebi rolls her eyes, relieved to have made it unnoticed to safety. Until pheromones have their way and she sneezes.

Get your scrawny butt back here, Jemisin!

Her sister wields their last name like an insult, as if Joebi’s ownership taints their heritage. She’s now lassoed, probably nothing as dramatic as a noose around her neck, but trapped just the same. She slouches in to the opulent room with its enormous bed in the middle, shades of red silk glistening so it reminds her of an arterial gash.

The space is a cathedral of columns and vaulted ceilings, a grandiose display of luxury in warm-hued marble and flashy gilt highlights. Projected over an entire wall at the bottom of her bed, is the giant altar of close-ups where flawless tawny skin shines, and seductive winks hint at possibilities.

Shara is more subtle in her blue-eyed inspection, but it’s obvious when her focus is drawn to a particularly large specimen, in both his defined form and arousal. His attitude shouts he’s giving his audience a phallic finger and the thought almost makes Joebi burst out in manic giggling. She buries the urge deep, this not the day for humour. Desperation taints the search, a knot of tension twisting her gut. She doesn’t understand why the auctions affect her so, when no one else gives them a second’s pause.

See anything you like, fidget? Elka smirks. Wait, you prefer fiddling about down there with your favourite person, don’t you?

Even as she takes the bait, Joebi chastises herself. She knows better than to argue with practised idiots, but Elka worms under her skin and she just can’t help it.

At least I’ve mastered hand-eye coordination. I’d lend you the instruction manual but I know you can’t read.

Ooh, she bites every time. Where’s that dreadful fluffy vermin you cart around? It’s not running loose, is it?

Careful, you’ll get those little wrinkles that make your mouth look like a cat’s butt.

Elka plants her hands across her mouth, her eyes wide in genuine horror. Do I need more fill, Shar? She brandishes a hand mirror and inspects her pursed lips from a distance of millimetres. Any more fill, Joebi thinks, and Elka’s lips will explode.

Reducing a human to body parts is banal, she mutters, aware her comment is wasted on the whole of society.

Shara is engrossed in the profound task of eyelash application. In a year, when Joebi’s eighteen, it’ll be her turn to endure this freak show. She’ll never be ready. Shara finally drags her focus from her own doll-like reflection.

You are not coming with me wearing that sack.

Black, ugh. It’s so unflattering.

Belatedly, Joebi ignores Elka. Good. Then I’m not coming.

Shara inhales slowly, a clear sign of failing patience. She’s decked out in lace-hugging finery, frills enhancing her augmented talents. Compared to Elka’s thigh-grazing skirt and filmy shirt stretched over her inflated assets, Shara is almost demure.

Her left hand rests in a nail laser-spray chamber on a wheeled trolley packed with cosmetics and lotions between them. Each totes a Champagne flute filled with costly bubbles. The rise and fall of her breasts is overt, even from across the room. Clearly Shara is also rehearsing, although she’s wasting the hair-tossing drama on Joebi.

Mama gave specific instructions. I’m to get you out of the house before you meld with your study chair and become part of the furniture. You need some sun.

You’ve talked with mama?

Joebi envies her mother spared this, but she’s not important enough to be excused. Bertha Jemisin single-handedly founded Chromoceuticals and wields more power than the city councillors combined. Did she not see the hypocrisy? Working from dawn to well past dusk exposes Bertie to nothing but fluorescence.

She wired her congratulations this morning. Shara at least has the decency to seem disappointed.

What I don’t need is hours wasted on a porn-slave quest.

Oh please don’t make this hard, Joebi.

I thought you liked hard.

Shara frees her hand and glares. If she’s not careful, she’ll crinkle her forehead. Nothing a product from the family business can’t erase. One set of fingers sports metallic bronze nails, the other fire-engine high gloss. She takes a slug of Champagne, emptying the glass. Elka refills for her and wine flows over the lip to splash the floor.

Sensors blink awake in the ceiling, but nothing happens. Shara’s scowl deepens, and she stamps her foot trying to provoke a response.

That’s the third time today, she says.

All three stare up at the ceiling. Joebi pivots for the en suite.

I’m not finished with you, Jemisin.

I was just going to get a towel from the bathroom to clean that up.

Ha, Elka snorts. Now she’s the hired help. Dipping down to your real level, fidget?

Finally, a tiny robot zips out from a concealed cupboard in the skirting board. Joebi frowns, watching it fail utterly at tracking. After several detours – one which forces Elka to scramble onto the bed to avoid a collision – the robot suctions the spill and lasers the area spotless again.

Stupid thing, Elka says, throwing the robot poisoned looks as it meanders a retreat.

Despite the robot’s superb aim, their home has been glitching a lot recently. If only Joebi wasn’t obliged to attend the despicable auctions, she’d spend the day interfacing with the AI. She serviced it a few weeks ago, stumped as to what she’s missed. Vague alarm nags at her. To this point, the AI has never malfunctioned. Order restored, Shara returns to the critical topic.

It’s my coming of age. A special day. She pleads, Don’t blow it for me.

Joebi bites her lip, supressing more smut about blow-jobs and coming. If the auction’s so special, why isn’t mamma taking you?

There’s been another hacking incident. Mamma’s coordinating the investigation of industrial espionage, maybe bio-terrorism.

Could that explain the glitch? If we’re going alone, can’t you let me off the hook? Just this once, Shar?

Don’t be ridiculous. They’d never let us go alone. Especially on my first bidding day. Mona’s escorting us.

Oh, for the love of peace. She’s worse than Elka, who’s like a Bonobo in heat.

A Bonobo? Elka yelps, even though Joebi’s pretty sure she doesn’t have the faintest idea that a Bonobo is a species of chimpanzee known for excessive copulation. The last few died out in private zoos and were probably just as starved for intimacy as these two, only Joebi feels deep regret over their plight. Don’t you dare compare me to that over-sexed old boiler. It’s undignified on someone of her age.

A cleared throat at her rear announces the presence of said old boiler. Joebi wishes she had Mona’s gift for sneakiness, which would have spared her this shrinking net.

Despite the glare of Elka’s shade of hair dye, we really don’t need to wear sunglasses indoors, Joebi. Yeast Infection Number One, isn’t it, Elka? Elka’s smile at Mona is sickly saccharine and loaded with dislike. Now run along, Joebi, and get dressed in something other than that funeral shroud. The car will be downstairs in fifteen minutes.

Joebi spins to object that her round spectacles are blue-tint to ease the constant strain of computer and microscope projections. Mona stares her down with a haughty demeanour that signals no tolerance for an argument.

Her mother’s Chief Executive Officer is known for her steel-plated spine, silver bouffant, and antique sex implements on display in glass cases lining her expansive corner office in the city’s best building. It’s rumoured her collection is still in regular use. She buys at every auction, onselling after the glow of youth dims and the novelty of a new toy to play with wears off.

Joebi speculates the middle-aged woman is over-compensating for something. She’s just not certain of what.

And Joebi? Gritting her teeth, Joebi gazes into Mona’s shark-grey irises. Leave your hair out. No plaits, buns or ponytails. Heaven forbid, no scarves. Nothing that drags on the floor or covers your neck. Nothing baggy. In fact, fabric cannot pass beyond these points. She rests one palm down where her baby-pink negligee peeks above her white suit jacket, the other sitting slightly above her knee. You are a Chromoceuticals ambassador first and foremost. Your aesthetic is our promotion.

Is our aesthetic dock-jock?

There are cubicles tucked around the harbour where all manner of ‘specialty’ is catered to, one just has to jack-in or dock. If that doesn’t knock a girl’s sandals off there’s always exotic deli-goods on offer: fems who’ve gone under the knife and manned up to varying degrees of success. Or mutilation, so Joebi’s heard. She wonders if Elka has taken a walk on the wild side down on the docks, if only for the boasting privileges.

Elka snickers and Joebi gets the message she is poor Chromoceuticals material. After that last impertinent comment, Mona’s raised eyebrows seem to agree.

Who is Joebi supposed to impress? It’s a question she asks herself often. The auction will teem with girls like Shara and her sister’s nasty court jester. Spoilt. Rich. Entitled narcissists. It is an eternal truth that beauty trumps brains. She wonders again if things were just as bad centuries ago before the imbalance, when the ratio of males to females was nearly even. Were girls as cruel to each other back then?

The decline remains inexplicable. There are plenty of theories, but no one can work out how to fix it. Joebi has made it her mission.

Aren’t clients interested in my grades? How pretty I am will be irrelevant when I cure the imbalance. Then none of this— She gestures at Elka simpering over a magnificent set of twins on the screen.

"Look, Shar! It’s the ‘Double Love’ twins. I am so buying them both."

Her mother owns Compartiblock Construction responsible for cheap, rapid-erect condominiums and she can afford premium. It seems she takes the company motto ‘Get it up quick and keep it up’ a little too literally.

Ooh, I love that show!

It’s so greedy. And everyone knows the auctions have nothing to do with love. It’s in the fine-print: love costs extra. Joebi raises her voice to drown them out.

"None of this will be necessary."

For someone so smart, you sure are dumb. Elka wheels around from the screen. It’d be more necessary than now.

Run. Along. No … animals, Mona says with distaste. And I won’t abide a badge, Jojo. She jabs at the ‘boys are not chattel’ badge prominent on Joebi’s chest. Today is not the day for your campaign.

If not today, then when? Joebi says.

She grumbles about hormonally sozzled, shallow people the entire time it takes to throw on a dress and arrive downstairs where a limousine hovers by the curb. Mona purses titian lips in disapproval, to which Joebi cocks an unplucked eyebrow.

The way I look is not the most important thing about me.

Mona sighs and Joebi knows she’s won this trivial battle. There will be many more she’ll lose on this stupid day, of all days. She scoots in front, as far as the booth will allow from a back row of critical eyes. But they are too impatient to delay while she slogs back up ten levels of the fire escape to change. She spurns the elevator and synthetic myostim in favour of real exercise.

Eek, white. Elka rifles the fridge next to Joebi for more booze, her bum waving in Mona’s face. It’s even more unflattering than black.

Mona presses into her seat – any further and she’d be in the trunk. Her features pucker like they do when she fires some poor deficient who delivers her coffee a degree either side of the ideal temperature.

So’s exposed nipple, Joebi says. At least I leave something to the imagination.

Elka snorts. "Imagination’s irrelevant. Why do you