Alteration Read online

  ALTERATION

  A Novel by Scott Jacobson

  Cover Art by Michele Van Patten-Muzones

  and Nicolas Alcala

  Dedicated to Bryan

  Prologue

  Nightmares

  Could barely see through the snow, barely feel beyond the icy lashes of wind, but I held her close and kept blindly moving forward, always forward.

  Ice bore into my bones and we had to stop at the top of the hill. Below, the city was nearly gone. The sun couldn’t burn through the layers of ice in the sky, leaving only the faint glow of neon like embers to prove the city nestled in the bowl of the valley.

  The blizzard grew fiercer, yelling at us to move, that they would catch us and kill us, but the cold up to my waist held me to the ground. We could only sit. Maybe freeze. But we’d freeze together.

  No words. Nothing to say. No apology, no empty reassurance. I was mute, feeling every inch of my body become nothing but ice.

  Shouting. They were drawing near, but when I looked down, it didn’t matter. It was already too late. Her head rolling back like a broken doll.

  Overhead the ice cracked and splintered dark red across the sky as the screaming of the wind slurred and silenced and the snow fell like glass. A shout behind me and I felt a dull pinch as the bullet drove into my back, my blood mixing with my tears.

  Chapter One

  Anywhere But Home

  I’m awake with a jolt and I’m drenched in sweat and it takes me a minute to realize I’m gasping for breath. It takes me another minute to convince myself I’m back in the solace of reality but when I finally return, I collapse my head into my hands, a thousand thoughts spinning and slicing at my mind like a kaleidoscope of shattered glass. This is the first time I’ve had that particular dream, but it’s only one of seemingly endless variations. The aches never dull, no matter how routine they become.

  Once I feel stable in reality, I lower my hands and see light shining through my bedroom window. Although muted by grime and obscured by clouds, it’s unmistakably morning. At least I don’t have to worry about going back to sleep. I don’t feel like I could ever sleep again.

  I get out of bed on unsteady legs, nearly toppling into the mirror next to the bed. I drive my foot into the floor and reorient myself in physical space, then sneak a glance at my reflection.

  Mom would’ve said I looked like death warmed over. My ash-blond hair is matted in strange juts, like it’s caught underwater, and my skin is wan as a corpse, a veneer of perspiration embalming me. Nevertheless, I rake a hand through my hair, manage my best smile, then grab the shirt on the nearby nightstand.

  I turn left out of my room and descend the stairs, old wood creaking and bending with each step. If I close my eyes, block out the wind outside, I can pretend to be descending to the smell of fresh pancakes and the crackle of frying bacon. I can pretend to feel Mom’s embrace as she hugs me "good morning," smell her natural fragrance of cinnamon in her dark coffee-colored hair. I almost hear the buzz of morning chatter from the breakfast table, my brother listening rapt to my father regaling him with a story, a young, chipper girl’s laugh blossoming into the air. But then my eyes flash open, and I’m back to the smell of dust and the grey of reality. I sigh, then continue to descend downstairs.

  Once I hit the final step, I can hear grunts of effort from the kitchen, and I know she’s awake. I enter through the doorway silently and sure enough, Kelly’s there. She’s standing on a kitchen chair, clad in a pink dress dappled with green flowers, stretching to her best extent to reach the cereal box sitting on the top shelf of the cabinets. Standing on the tips of her toes, her fingers graze the bottom of the box. She’s reaching so high, her large pigtails on the sides of her head tremble with the effort, like they’re trying to flap and fly her up to the box. They’re a fairer blonde than my own, protruding from the sides of her head like angel wings. It’s a unique style to say the least, but she’s had them for so long, the thought of her without them is unfathomable.

  I let her give it one last good stretch before I easily reach the box from behind her. She isn’t startled by my intervention, but she does turn to me with a wide grin, wrapping her arms around my shoulders.

  "Maybe next time put the box on a lower shelf, huh?" she asks. I make a noncommittal noise.

  We stay embraced for a few seconds, then we release and I give her the box. She takes it, jokingly brusque about it, then hops off the chair, and she turns her head towards me as she moves to the table just paces away from the cabinets, dragging the chair across the concrete floor. "Sleep well?" Kelly asks with perky politeness.

  I can’t lie, but I can’t talk to her about what I experienced, what I saw. "Made it through the night," I eventually reply.

  She makes it clear that she understands my wording, but she grins and nods all the same. "I had a great dream."

  "Of what?" I ask as I grab a knife and start buttering a slice of the bread loaf on the counter under the cabinet.

  "Oh, it was so pretty! There was a field of green grass and daisies everywhere! Perfect weather… and we were all there! Having a picnic! You, me, Mom… Dad..."

  The names weigh heavily upon my heart, the unspoken one the heaviest, but I still smile and nod.

  "We were all together! Like a family!" Kelly finishes wistfully.

  Her last sentence plays over in my head. I already understand her meaning, but it’s like my head has to turn the sentence over, like it’s a foreign object. Yet I look back to her, eating cereal with that dreamy look, and I can’t help but share her optimism. My next bite of bread tastes better than the last.

  Suddenly, a dog with a sandy coat threads through my legs with a "Yip!" to yank me back from reverie. I sigh with a melancholy desire. That idyllic picnic is destined to exist only in that moment of thought, never to be truly touched or fulfilled. The color of the image drains away back into the grey kitchen. The bread is stale mush again.

  I crouch down and scratch Goldie behind his ears. He reminds me of Kelly; he sees the gloom around, but as something alterable. When he wags his tail, it feels like he’s trying to paint color into the world. Kelly is the same in her own way. They’re a perfect pair.

  As if to prove that point, Goldie gets up in the middle of my scratching and bounds over to Kelly sitting at the table. Giggling, she drops off her chair and rubs his head and neck with affectionate vigor.

  I bite into my bread again. "How do you even come up with this stuff? You’ve never seen a field. Or grass. Have you?"

  She shrugs, attention still on the dog. "I’ve seen pictures. Paintings. But I’d love to see the real deal one day."

  "Wouldn’t we all." I finish my bread and clap my hands to brush the crumbs off. "C’mon, kiddo, better get moving for school today."

  Kelly’s finished scarfing down her cereal, hopping down from the chair and bringing the bowl to the sink. After the bowl clatters in, she looks up with her big emerald eyes and smiles. "Just one more thing! Back in a sec!"

  I watch her run down the hall and up the stairs, hearing each creak as she bounds up. I pour myself a cup of water from the pitcher next to the bread loaf, and take a swig while I pick my coat off my chair. Goldie pants happily as he threads around my legs. Must be nice to have a life so simple. So blissfully unaware of the... well... everything. All that matters to him is food and family.

  Come to think of it, it’s not that different from my life now.

  Tugging the rest of my coat on, I hear the bounding in reverse as Kelly trots down, holding a folded piece of paper in her hand, which she holds it out to me, smiling brightly.

  A card. On the cover, "Happy Birthday" is written in red crayon block lettering, and inside is a message: "Damian, you’re the best big brother ever! Happy 20th Birthday!
Love, Kelly."

  I give an appreciative whistle. "So that's where your allowance went. You didn't go bankrupt for a box of crayons, did you?"

  "Close. I made sure I would have enough to wrap you a present this year!"

  Today, November 24th, I turn twenty. I almost can't believe it myself. And I don’t know if I can at this point. It’s been a full ten years since the move, and this decade of despair has dragged on for so long, time's just become a monochromatic blur. Another page on the calendar, blown around and crumpled by the same bleak autumn wind that makes every other day just as cold.

  "I wanted to make today extra special since you're twenty now!" Kelly continues brightly, outshining my despondency. "You've been around for two whole decades! I haven't even been around one!"

  "Aw, kid, twenty's no big deal."

  She only smiles wider. "You know it is! That's why I wanted to get you something really nice this year!"

  I catch some of her infectious smile, taking her coat off her chair. "Well, we gotta get going, but I can’t wait until after work so I can see what it is."

  She accepts the coat, and as she finishes putting books in her backpack, I tie a rope to Goldie’s collar as a leash, and swing the door open carefully as to send it falling off its rotten hinges.

  We’re greeted by a brisk November wind whose only purpose seems to be to push the low fog around, repositioning it as if the current arrangement is somehow displeasing. The fog color matches the grey sky above, so it’s like we’re stepping through a thundercloud. All around us, stone buildings stretch skyward like outstretched hands trying to climb out of the basin. Since ours is the outermost layer of the city, most buildings back to the cliffs surrounding; some even use the craggy rock as a back wall. Many of the buildings’ residents are outside, some scrubbing the dirty concrete with rough sponges in a vain effort to look halfway presentable amidst the squalor. Homemakers use clothespins to hang laundry up to dry on jury-rigged clotheslines. They’re no bother, most not even acknowledging us, but I my grip on Kelly’s hand instinctively tightens as we walk by their vacant stares.

  We pass by the bakery on the corner, waving to Jerome behind the counter containing a few bread loaves, some muffins, and not much else. Jerome smiles back and waves, but then goes back to staring out the lone window in the back of the bakery.

  Our layer the one constituting the rim of the city, that window gives a clean view to the urban mass contained within, trapped behind the glass. Layers of civilization shrink inward like the rings of a tree trunk. As the rings move inward, it’s evident how the level of prosperity increases.

  The rings themselves are divided into four distinct sections. Ours, the largest in length, but not width, is monikered as the Dust Sector. We sit up here, allegedly hampered by government regulation, but largely left to fend for ourselves. We sit up here, far out of anyone’s reach, just collecting dust, circumscribing the city; only harsh, barren wastelands lay beyond us.

  On our other side is the Diligence Sector, home to all government-sanctioned industrial operations. No one lives there. It’s all mechanical whirs, pounds, and the thick smoke they produce. The smoke doesn’t help the Dust Sector, and coatings of ash often cling to our buildings and lungs alike. But the situation is despairingly moot, so we’re stuck breathing in smog so those in the subsequent Domestic Wing, the much more luxurious counterpart to our Dust, can have new sofas.

  Behind the thickets of tall Domestic apartments, one can just barely see the centerpiece of the city: the Directorate Sector, where all the rules are vomited out. It’s the sector responsible for keeping our society from becoming as anarchic as the wastelands and keep the people from becoming as belligerent as the creatures who call them home, which is easier said than done, at least in Dust. I’ll admit, they have their hands full in there. I’d hate to be the guy who’s carrying Hell in his hands and ends up dropping it.

  Jerome’s bakery serves as a sort of de facto marker for the marketplace entrance. The market here stretches only about five stalls long, and plenty of similar spots can be found in Dust if you’re willing to walk the city perimeter, but the stands have mostly the same wares all over: plenty of fruit, one stand usually has vegetables, another some sort of meat. The markets are always the busiest places in Dust, lots of people going just to chat with others, but at this hour, the crowd is sparse, and the conversations are hushed, like the people are leery of silence.

  We’re passing by one of the fruit stalls as I tighten the slack of Goldie’s leash so he doesn’t start jumping (his instinct when confronted with new people, smells, and everything else), when I feel a tug in my other hand. Kelly’s trying to direct my attention a stall up ahead.

  "Those dark red apples are back in stock!" she exclaims, and sure enough, they are. She slows her pace a bit. I slow a bit, but not so much.

  "I’ll check ‘em out after work," I tell her.

  "Maria!" She’s dragging her feet now, calling for the attention of the elderly stall worker, breaking her off her reading and into a toothy grin.

  "Hello there, Kelly," Maria waves a small wave. "Damian."

  Kelly wiggles free of me, and it’s only then do I stop and wait for her. "When did these get in?" Kelly cheerily asks, gesturing to the apples.

  "Got ‘em fresh this morning," Maria answers sweetly, thin fingers drumming along the top of her counter. "Did someone want a free sample?"

  Kelly makes a coy face. "You know they’re my favorite."

  "That I do. Go ahead." As Kelly eagerly reaches for one, the second the words pass Maria’s colorless lips, her heavy gaze falls on me and doesn’t budge as Kelly thanks her profusely. I feel at my empty pocket and offer Goldie’s leash to Kelly, telling her to just lead him out of the market before he bursts and I’ll catch up.

  As she leans into the apple for a bite, walking away, I turn back to Maria’s stony gaze again. She’s stopped drumming her fingers, instead holding them out. She doesn’t verbally say anything, just letting her stern eyes do the talking, speaking in a vernacular a lot of people in Dust use.

  "I didn’t grab any money on the way out," I apologize. "Next sample, I’ll bring double, okay?"

  "There’s no other time until the money comes." She runs the fingers of her other hand through her chalk-white hair, her other hand still outstretched. Her voice has lost all the warmth she offered Kelly.

  "Double next time," I echo myself firmly, turning to follow Kelly, walking briskly to avoid having to hear Maria’s usual quiet chastising, barely catching something like "...don’t she why she can’t…" before catching up to Kelly for her to hand back Goldie’s leash.

  "Sorry, just asking for bulk pricing," I make up an excuse.

  "There been a price change?" Kelly asks before taking another bite of the apple.

  "No… well, just a smidge cheaper. Gotta sell the lot before winter and all."

  "Well, she can always leave us any surplus."

  "We’d need to get through them before winter, y’know. Won’t last."

  "Please. They won’t last a day around me."

  A few seconds pass. I think about winter. Always a tough time. Hopefully Pete’s bonus will carry us through again.

  "I checked Sarah’s stall," Kelly says. "Too late for seeds."

  "Seeds? What for?"

  "Didn’t I tell you? Katrina’s parents started a garden. I thought it was really cool and we should try it."

  Maybe we should. Little more dependable food on the table. "Maybe come spring," I tell her.

  "I feel like it’s already pretty chilly," Kelly changes the subject. "Will it be colder this than last year, you think?"

  I don’t want to think about that yet. "Isn’t that always the case?"

  "I dunno." Another bite. After a brief inspection of the fruit, she lightly tosses the core into a trash bin.

  Our walk concludes as we reach Whitis School. It’s actually an impressive building, at least residing in the sector it does. It’s a couple stories high,
and wide enough to fit four of Jerome’s bakeries. Surprisingly enough, there’s enough students to justify the size. I guess that’s the result of so many families either seeking refuge in the city from whatever remains in the wastelands, who don’t have a dollar to their names and probably can’t spell their names either, or falling to poverty as the war begins to escalate. Fortunately for the former, the school accepts all ages, so parents can learn alongside their children.

  We stop in front of the steps, where Kelly waves to a group of girls her age, and they all wave back enthusiastically. I give them a quick wave, then drop down to hug Kelly goodbye. However, after I let go, Kelly keeps me knelt.

  "Before you go off to work," she says, "I want you to open your present."

  I give a confused half-smile. "You have it here?"

  She nods excitedly, then rummages through her backpack, removing a rectangular parcel wrapped in red paper. "I wrapped it in red because I know it’s your favorite color!"

  I can’t help but full-smile now. I rip open the paper, revealing a book. On the cover is another book, but rather than containing pages, it opens to reveal matches. The title, Fahrenheit 451, lines the top of the book in simple, utilitarian font.

  "Kelly, where’d you get this?" There aren’t many bookstores in Dust, and stores that do sell books are a long walk away. Farther than I’d want Kelly to go.

  Her smile doesn’t waver. "My friend Katrina’s brother used to know a librarian, and he kept a lot of books. But he’s leaving home, so he left his collection behind. Katrina read it, and she let me have it. I think you’ll like it! It’s about a society where books are illegal and the government brainwashes everyone!"

  "Yeah? And what makes you think I’d like a book like that?"

  "Well... I know you’re a big worrier who’s always so sad about everything, so I guess I thought you’d be heartened to read about a society that has it worse than us! Plus, a good book always helps me get to sleep, so I’m hoping it will help you!"