Grime 314: A Novel

By Trevor Siegel

Set in a world governed by grammar, Grime 314 is a dystopian drama that satirizes political correctness in modern culture. It follows a court case, from the initial arrest to the courtroom itself, with the narrative shifting between the defendant, the defendants young and inexperienced attorney, the police officer that arrested the defendant, and a member of the jury. Told in riveting detail, Grime 314 is a story of love, loss, and grammar in a world torn apart by correctness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9781532040573

Trevor Siegel

“The Scent of the Queengrass” is the third novel by Trevor Siegel following “Grime 314: a novel” and “Wilson on the Search for Originality”, both of which were published while he was still in high school. He is currently a freshman majoring in film and media studies at Columbia University and owes everything to his loving family and friends.

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Copyright © 2018 Trevor Siegel.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-4056-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-4057-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018900068

iUniverse rev. date:  02/05/2018

For my family

PROLOGUE

The First Ten Grimes of Our City

Letter sent from Jerry Miller I to Julie Marks

Dear Julie,

As I am sure you very well remember, I have been given full power over our fair city’s government so that I can begin my new grammar crime plan.

After much consideration and deliberation, I have finally decided to call these grammar crimes Grimes. I am sure that you will agree that this is the best name for the new laws.

The reason I am writing you is that I want you to help me unveil these new Grimes to the rest of our beautiful city. You are a face that everyone knows and unlike me, at least some people do not despise you.

In this letter, I will detail the first ten Grimes that I have created for our fair city. They are to be immediately executed as of tomorrow. I hope that you will have no trouble announcing these new laws to the public with me tomorrow night.

Without these helpful and needed grammar laws, our city would fall into ruin and irreparable disarray. These grammar laws will bring families closer together. They will cause everyone to be equal and they will make life, as a whole, fair.

We need these laws, Julie, and with your help, they will become a reality.

The first ten Grimes are as follows:

Grime #1: You are not allowed to use the word ‘it’s’ unless it is not in the contraction form.

Grime #2: You must use the correct form of the word ‘there’ and are not allowed to use the contraction form of the word. ‘They’re’ is a contraction for ‘they are’, ‘their’ refers to something owned by a group, and ‘there’ refers to a place.

Grime #3: You must use the word ‘your’ as a possessive. You cannot use the contraction ‘you’re’. You must say ‘you are’.

Grime #4: The titles known as ‘Mister’ and ‘Missus’ will no longer be used. Instead, every person must be addressed with the title of ‘Sir’ or ‘Madam’ based on his or her gender.

Grime #5: When one is asserting that one object or idea should be compared to something else, make sure you always clarify what that something else is; one must not use incomplete comparisons.

Grime #6: When you are describing a person, you must use ‘who.’ When you are describing an object, you must use ‘that.’

Grime #7: You must use ‘who’ to identify a living pronoun, ‘whom’ to describe someone who is receiving something, and ‘whose’ to assign ownership to someone.

Grime #8: You must use ‘in to’ and ‘into’ accordingly. The word ‘into’ indicates movement while the two words ‘in to’ modify a sentence.

Grime #9: You must use the words ‘then’ and ‘than’ accordingly. ‘Than’ is used to make comparisons while ‘then’ is used to situate actions in time.

Grime #10: You must use the words ‘affect’ and ‘effect’ accordingly. When you are talking about the change itself (the noun) you will use ‘effect.’ When you are talking about the act of changing (the verb) you will use ‘affect.’

If any citizen breaks these Grimes, they will be immediately arrested with no opportunity to post bail. They will be given only one opportunity to appear in court to argue their case. If they are found guilty of only breaking one of these laws, they will be sentenced to prison for a contingent period of time.

These are only the first ten Grimes that I have created for our fair city.

There will be more.

- Jerry Miller has signed this letter

CONTENTS

Prologue

PART I

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

PART II

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

PART III

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

PART IV

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

PART V

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Epilogue

Files Of The City

Acknowledgments

PART I

CHAPTER ONE

T HE CRISP AND ACRID SUMMER air was split by the reverberate sound of the Designated Listener’s bell that morning. The sound was more rattling than usual to the tenants of 196 Shelley Boulevard, especially so to David Clements, the token elderly man of the large apartment complex. The ringing of the bell stung the old man’s ears as he slowly rose out of his small bed to make his morning cup of coffee. As he crossed over to the kitchen side of the room, he looked out the single window of his apartment. Across from his apartment was a small, blank alley where many men and women of a poor constitution would commonly waste away their hours. On the front wall of the alley sat a bright poster. At the center of the poster was a large picture of Jerry Miller the Second pointing a pudgy finger out to the world. Below him read the slogan:

There will be more.

David grimaced, his eyes narrowing in on the poster. He turned away from the dank and desolate alley and back to his equally foul apartment. He walked over to his coffee maker. As he put the black grounds into the machine, the ringing only seemed to get louder, as if Carly’s only true reason for ringing her bell was to peeve him.

After ten agonizing minutes of the designated twenty minute Ringing Period, David could bear no more of the loud ringing and cried out, Carly! Please cease to ring the Designated Listeners bell, as it is not only bringing a pain to my ears but a pain to other ears as well! Not a perfect sentence, but he was sure that the External Laws would find no problem with it. The ringing slowly began to fade, and sure enough, after about ten seconds, it drifted away.

David let out a satisfied grunt, and grabbing his old ebony cane, he hobbled over to his refrigerator and grabbed the cream from within. Slowly rotating around to inch back to his coffee pot, David shakily put the carton down next to his empty mug. He then proceeded to take the pot full of the piping hot drink. Delicately using two hands, he poured it into his blue and green acrylic mug. Next came the cream, frothy and thick, whose stark whiteness created an austere contrast with the darkness of the store-bought coffee.

Sitting down in the solitary seat of his small one-room apartment, he began to tentatively sip his coffee as he beguiled the time by reading Our Nation’s News. That day, the cover was about a young heiress whose fortune had almost been taken away from her by her very own banker, but her fortune had fortunately been saved by another banker from the same financial agency. David’s heart sank slightly as he read about the heiress. There was something about her that caught his eye. As slight tears began to well up in his eyes, he caught sight of another article. This one detailed how a mendicant man had been arrested for breaking Grime forty-five: Using the phrase alot instead of a lot in writing. This was a simple Grime that seemed quite easy to follow, but some people were not lucky enough to get a proper grammar education nowadays, because if one wanted a job, one had to put all of their money into training for that job. This left no money for grammar school. Suddenly, his eyes dried up and a slight smile crept onto his face. What a humorous story. He knew he did not have to read the boring newspaper, but he had read Lolita, the only book deemed grammatically correct enough, too many times to count and found that after the government had banned sportscasters because their commentary was not grammatically correct, sports games on the television had become quite quiet.

The bell began to ring again…

David was in the middle of the article about the mendicant man when Carly made the insufferable noises once again.

The Designated Listeners and their bells had always confounded David. He constantly asked himself what the point was. Why did every building need a Listener? David had always thought to himself late at night when even the stars had gone to sleep, If I was in charge here, there wouldn’t be a Designated Listener! We all should just have computer chips in our brains, and whenever a Grime is broken, the chip sends a signal to a computer that then sends the police directly to the criminal! None of this Designated Listener nonsense. He thought that once he figured out the complex science to his idea, he could become rich.

The bell rang once more…

The old man cowered in his seat now. The constant ringing of the bell had become too much for his old ears, and he had finally had enough. For thirteen years at 196 Shelley Boulevard, Carly Freudling had rung her bell four times a day, and every single time she had rung that bell, from the day thirteen years ago when Designated Listeners became mandatory to today, it seemed to get louder and louder and louder. Carly had never skipped a day or called in sick. She was always there. She was always walking the halls with her Designated Listener’s headphones in and her bell ringing, listening to all of the building’s conversations using the government mandated microphones used inside all buildings.

Today was the last straw. Today the bell had to cease ringing once and for all.

Filled with an energy unfelt in many years, David picked up his trusty ebony friend and placed it on his right side. Hand in hand they slowly walked out the door.

The bell rang…

It rang again…

Once more…

Now only silence…

The ringing in 196 Shelley Boulevard had ceased at last.

CHAPTER TWO

S AMUEL BLAIR LOOKED UP FROM his test. As he gazed around the room, he noticed the rest of his fellow test takers. He realized every single one of them were bent over their own tests, their focus drilled into the thick packets of paper in front of them. He checked his watch. As he gazed at it a wide, shimmering smile broke across his face. He got up from his desk and quietly walked over to the front of the room, where his professor was seated. I have finished my exam, Sir Roberts, Samuel said in his silken voice of honey. May I leave the premises, sir?

John Roberts looked up every so slightly at the young man before him, giving an incredulous chuckle. Sir Blair, you mean to tell me that you have completed writing down all of the Grimes and their penalties in under an hour?

Samuel knew neither what to do in this situation nor how to respond to the gruff old man’s question. He turned to face the rest of the classroom. All the other students were still hunched over their tests, seemingly unaware of Samuel having left his seat. Looking back at Sir Roberts, he simply nodded his head ever so slightly in an attempt to be both polite yet assertive.

The professor laughed at the boy standing before him. Sir Blair, the fastest Grammar and Law Test time currently is three hours and thirty-one minutes and was accomplished by Grimer Phillip Spaulding. I am sure you are aware of Sir Spaulding’s prestige and accomplishments as a Lawyer of Grammar and as a Grimer. If I understand what you are saying, then you are claiming to have finished the Grammar and Law Test in its entirety in fifty-two minutes, is that correct? The older man took his round and thick glasses off, making it so that there was no obstruction between him and his student.

Samuel looked back at his other classmates, who had suddenly looked up from their exams and had begun to look at the curious scene occurring at the front of the room. As he made eye contact with a few of his fellow classmates, he began to wiggle his fingers as if he was playing an imaginary trumpet. His stomach seemed to turn inside out. He turned back to his teacher and cautiously dipped his foot into the conversation pool, Yes sir, I wrote down all three hundred and thirteen Grimes and each penalty for breaking them.

Sir Roberts looked down at the paper in front of him. Please return to your seat, Sir Blair, he