Defective

Defective

  A novella

  By Sharon Boddy

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  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 kn
ew 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