Skin Nation

by Joni Bing

  ****

  For the first time in months, I woke up and didn't feel...incomplete? Irrelevant might be a better word. Yeah, irrelevant because for the first time in months, for the first time after all my friends gave their souls over to the Mass, after my mother caved in to the System's rules-all except EMFH technique; she did have some heart, thank the stars-and after realizing that I'd never see Josh again...then, again, maybe I did just feel important because I totally wasn't complete.

  “My body hurts like hell,” I said low.

  I scoped the room like an idiot afraid that my voice would echo into the neighboring rooms, if there were any rooms for my voice to enter. I studied the room and it was no basement, but it was dark and windowless. Or maybe it was a basement? I don't know. I've never been in one. I lived in a community before I got captured then captured again by the boys.

  My community was a bloc of flats connected by their sides. Their appearance was similar to the apartment type buildings in New York during Old Nation times. No flats resembled one another due to their distinction in color, but each was made of brick. The week before my first capturing, the community gathered together in revolt against the Gov's plan to repaint the flats either cream or red, whichever color chosen as the repaint being up to the abider of the home. I didn't understand what the big uprising was about, but the repaint held great significance for our future if you let my mother's crazy co-workers tell it. I guess it had a lot to do with Carl Dickens changing out nation's colors to red, white, and black.

  As my body sunk deeper into the lumpy bed by the second, I tried to fall back asleep and as drowsy as I felt, no attempt could force my eyes to shut.

  “Hey.”

  My eyes flashed open and the guy that saved me stood at the door. I filled my insides with a heavy puff of breath and scratched my sweaty eyebrow. “Hi...”

  “Get up. We're going to the store.”

  “All of us?”

  “Just you and me.”

  “Why you and me?”

  “Can you go one second without asking questions?”

  I froze. It wasn't the tone he used to color his question that ceased me because it was calm—you could even say passive aggressive without the aggressive undertone. It was just fear evoking, father-like. Well, based on the stereotypes I found in banned Old Nation memorabilia Josh showed me of how fathers would speak to their children. I sat up in the bed and dangled my legs over to the side after taking in another heavy breath to soothe the pain racking through my frail body.

  “You won't hurt me,” I said, staring into his eyes. Without him saying a word to reassure me, I already believed that.

  “No one will. Not anymore. Not with me around.”

  “And, if you're not?”

  He shook his head and tapped on the doorway. “There's some jeans in there,” he pointed to a big chest in front of me. “Find a pair and meet me out.”

  He left and my mouth fell agape to speak until he was no longer in view. I clamped my mouth shut again and slumped my body into a hopeless arch.

  If they did kidnap me for my protection, I thought, I need to stay on their good side. Not that I need them. I could easily find my own place like I've always wanted. Although, it would be nice to live in a full house...full of boys.

  I gave my thoughts some thought. Yeah, I'll stay.

  I hopped from the bed, almost. The moment my feet hit the ground, a stinging sensation burned through the mid of my back. I reached my arm around to touch the cause even though my recent memory immediately reminded me of the damage done. Never knew third degree scars existed until that moment.

  After opening the deep chest, my hands shuffled through bundles and bundles of oak and insecticide scented clothes. It took me about five tries, but in good time, I found the perfect size. Size 3. Average. It figures. I stretched the pants around my hips and the moment I reached to fasten them, the guy that sat by the bed before stepped in.

  “Almost done?” he smiled beside the door.

  I shrunk. He reminded me of SJ only he stood taller, and his face didn't hold as many creepy features.

  “I'm done. Leave.”

  He chuckled once and left the room.

  Might as well leave! Didn't get what you want did you, ya pig? I spat angrily in my thoughts.

  I buttoned the jeans and smiled into a mirror that didn't exist. I kept seeing myself in my room. I started to miss my mother, but I didn't crack a tear. I took in another deep breath and rushed out the room instead.

  “Nice jeans,” one of the guys laughed low.

  I glowered over to my left at the Spanish guy and he stared back, a beer in his palm and a smoke clinging to the tips of his fingers. He blew smoke over at me and formed his liquor glossed lips into a kiss. Completely grossed out, I turned away and continued my walk toward the door as the others laughed.

  “Hey.” I recognized the voice now. My first sight when I regained consciousness. The white guy with constantly intrigued eyes. “Show us some skin,” Wild Eyes winked, stretching his already wide eyes.

  “In your dreams,” I replied, rushing for the door. They wouldn't hurt me. Lary would protect me.

  “You're lucky to still even have it, you know?” he said, raising his voice. “The least you can do is show it off.”

  I stopped in my tracks with my hands balled tightly at my sides and my jaw so clenched that I grew fearful of it popping out of socket. “You want to see some skin?”

  “Yeah,” the two guys exclaimed.

  Both sat on either side of the room and the third, the guy that was in the middle sat alone in a lounge chair. He hadn't spoken a word yet, but he stared at me in anticipation with the other guys, just waiting for my next move. His stare caught me off guard. There was no interest or evoked emotion in it. It was as if he was seeing right through me. Like he was staring beyond my clothes, beyond my skin.

  “Well?!” Wild Eyes said, spinning his beer free hand like it would fast forward to the moment of my reveal.

  I turned my back to them and smirked. “Okay.”

  I took a few steps back to reveal my skin in the dim beam of light centered above the room to be sure they visually captured every detail. I took my time lifting the back of my shirt and as it grazed against my sensitive skin, I reflected back on the last night Josh and I walked down XYM Avenue after Mass, realizing that was just the night before. I thought about that doxy who came up to him, who almost revealed her bust to satisfy him so that she could satisfy the debts of her biological needs.

  My eyes flashed open. It was happening. I was becoming just like her. Still, even with that revelation running through my mind, I found myself rolling up my shirt, revealing my back to these strangers who had done nothing, but prostitute me since my arrival.

  “Whoa!” one of them exclaimed.

  “Like what you saw?!” I snapped.

  I fled the room in tears and felt a hand on my shoulder a moment later.

  “Hey wait!”

  Wild Eyes lurked behind me, but I slammed the door in his face. Even in the black night, the hearse they captured me in easily came into view when I walked outside, but that wasn't the first sight that caught my attention. The first was the unfamiliarity of my surroundings. I stood outside in the brisk autumn night in the midst of a commune setting, only it wasn't my commune or any commune barely recognizable. As I took in the scene, I felt a tug on my wrist.

  “Hey, please--”

  “Back off!”

  “What's going on?” Lary barked from the driver seat of the hearse.

  “Her back! Have you seen it?”

  “Who cares? Leave me alone!”

  “No, I haven't. Mar changed her. He didn't tell-Come here.”

  “What?”

  “Come to the car.”

  I paused for a sec then shook off Wild Eyes who stepped back. I looked back at him in disgust to find his eyes sparkling like he was on the verge of tears, like he actually cared. I didn't understand why. I didn't u
nderstand him.

  I didn't even wait for Lary's demand to turn around. I leaned against the car door the moment I reached it, and he lifted my shirt. He pulled it down fast after about a half a second examination and the pain of the graze against my skin seared throughout every section of my body.

  “Man...”

  My cheeks flushed from Lary's shaken tone enveloping that one word. All of a sudden, my knees buckled and the cold of the outside really struck my bones. I was...paralyzed. Lary came off as the confident leader of the clan, the one with all the answers. That was clear to me from the moment I awoke. So, when that word fell from his lips, it became clear to me that I was fatefully screwed.

  “We'll handle this in the morning. She'll be fine until then.”

  “Okay, Lar.”

  That's when I knew his name. That's when I could move and I felt safe again. Wild Eyes started to walk away then turned to watch me get into the car.

  “Inside,” Lary told him.

  He Followed and shut the door slowly behind him. I wanted to laugh at him for Following. He was just like everybody else. Following the “leader”. I squeezed my eyes shut to make the laughter wanting to erupt from me go away and Lary drove off quick, without warning.

  “What's on my back? What's wrong with me?”

  “You'll be fine.”

  “Until morning, according to you.”

  “Look, it's just some escape damage. We all have it.”

  “It still burns. Is it still suppose to-”

  “You're lucky to be alive right now. Focus on that instead of tomorrow.”

  I shook my head, catching on to the meaning between his words. I didn't know a lot. I still don't know much in comparison to Lary's knowledge, but I've always possessed great interpersonal discernment, and that discernment informed me that he was used to knowing everything and at the moment, maybe for the first time in his life, he was unsure whether he had the answer for a presented crisis.

  “How did you escape?”

  I told him how and he nodded knowingly. I figured, hopefully hoped, that he was on to something.

  “We'll wait 'til morning. You'll be fine.”

  “I believe you.”

  It grew silent.

  “I don't like your friends,” I stated.

  “I don't either.”

  I looked over and he was smiling. That surprised me. He didn't seem like the type, but I can't say it saddened me to see his cheeks uplifted.

  “I really don't like that guy who came out with me.”

  “Oh, Reno,” he laughed. “He's new. Found the poor kid running for his life out of Cypress.”

  “Cypress?”

  Cypress constantly reigned in New Nation Broadcasting News. It was one of the roughest provinces in Central Union. People only lived there because they couldn't do better, not because they found barricading and decoying their flats to keep away vagrants a lovely experience. It was filled with dozens of doxies, druggies, and...just everything that could wreck a person's life. It was also twenty minutes from where I lived. Figures.

  “He's a good kid. Just needs to stop drinking.”

  “And smoking,” I added.

  “Yeah, that too, most definitely, but he has a big heart for such a horrible...”

  “Life? Past?”

  “Everything...”

  “I think he...likes me.”

  “Or his hormones are in full rage. He's at that stage now.”

  “What? Pubery?”

  “It's pronounced puberty, and no, withdrawal.”

  “Withdrawal?”

  “My term for captured kids who are placed into a different environment and lifestyle and must readjust.”

  “That's pretty legit.”

  He ignored my ignorance. “Reno's new. He hasn't learned to be somewhat celibate like the others yet.”

  “Celi-what?”

  Lar never answered. He got out of the car and shut the door instead. I didn't know we were already at our stop. I didn't know any of these new words he was using, even though for seventeen years, I aced my classes. His big words intrigued me. They made me feel dumb for not knowing them yet they gave me this drive to learn more and use them myself.

  I exited the car, completely unaware of my whereabouts and joined Lar on the other side.

  “You look awful,” he said, fixing my hair. Oddly enough, my reflexes didn't budge. I had no problem with it because for some reason I couldn't wrap my head around I felt safe.

  “Um, thanks.”

  He walked on and I kept pace with him while trying my best to ignore the pain inflaming my body, forcing me to stagger. I looked over at the huge building we were entering and my stomach squirmed from the unfamiliarity. The wide, one-story building stood at least six times Lary's height. Types of people I'd never seen before exited the old steel building and not one darted their eyes in my direction. It reminded me of my first day of K-5 school. Only no one in K-5 had hardcore sleeve tattoos and piercings.

  Lary and I entered the building and tall brown shelves that reminded me of the book shelves in the library back in YA school lined the center of the spacious room.

  “What is this place?”

  “Take a look.”

  I walked on and this time Lary Followed me. It felt good, being Followed. I circled the aisles and examined the items that lined the top of each shelf's section.

  “Food. This is a store.”

  “You could say that. Technically, it's a warehouse. That's all that exists here now.”

  “Here,” I paused. “Where exactly is here?”

  “Borealia.”

  “Borealia!”

  Lary grabbed my arm and pulled me to him as a few people walking turned to look over at us after my sudden outburst.

  “You can't do that here, got it? Not anywhere.”

  “Okay, okay,” I nodded rapidly.

  He took a moment to release me, and my only reaction was the release of a held breath from the surprise of his reaction. He just didn't scare me. I wondered why that was so. But his answer had. Borealia? Any desire I might have possessed to run home was crushed then. Borealia was the northern country above mine for the Liberals. It was just about the only nation Carl Dickens didn't run yet. That immediately explained the odd people I passed.

  “You ever been to a store?” he asked as he walked in front of me.

  “No, and definitely not nothing like this.”

  “Definitely not anything like this.”

  “...Sorry.”

  That would get annoying, I could tell.

  “Things have changed for the worse here in Borealia. We don't have stores anymore-those are for the rich who can afford their management and delivery boys to shop for them. We buy our food from food banks and warehouses. You usually find better quality at food banks, but this warehouse is the closest food source to our province in twenty-five miles.”

  “So, at the food bank...they sell fresh food?”

  He snorted. “Yeah. Fresh a week ago.”

  “And here?”

  Lary turned to walk away and I took a few steps forward.

  “But how here? Borealia is such an independent nation. How could this happen?”

  “It's been a worldwide goal to take us down for decades now. You take down the partner of the strongest nation, and everyone else will believe that there is no chance of survival.”

  “But wait. I thought the Gov only had control over the Eastern Nations and Central Union was still test-trialing the Tri-Life Theory.”

  “Some people thought that. We thought that.”

  He walked on through the empty aisles in between the shelves and turned into the next aisle full of starch products.

  “What happened?”

  “Some other time.”

  I knew what he meant. He'd explain later-some other time, some other place. I thought about that and wished it to be true. To be in some other time, sitting in some other place. Maybe then, I wouldn't have to withdrawal so
on.

  “Carry this.”

  Lary lifted a big white sack of an unmarked food inside a long white bag into the cradle of my arms and I pushed the bag up against my chest easier than I anticipated based on its height and expected weight by sight.

  “What is this?”

  “Pasta with dried vegetables. It's all we can afford this week.”

  “Why?”

  Lary stopped abruptly and stared me down. This time, bumps rose across my skin and my eyes stretched. I shut my mouth and followed Lary to check-out. I guess I really did ask a lot of questions.

  In Old Nation movies, I remembered seeing stores having people called cashiers who took the food and told the person how much everything cost combined. The warehouses had no cashiers, just machinery. Lary stabbed the buttons in the center of the long machine with his fingers and I looked around at the other machines in front of the room then at the shelves in the middle.

  “Drop the bag.”

  I looked at him then at the gray flat surface below the machine and dropped the bag on top. A red line travelled up and down the long screen on the side of the machine facing us and when the bag exited the scanner, the screen attached to the exit door revealed a symbol that resembled something I saw on the Old Nation currency that Josh kept stored away underneath his bed in a wooden chest.

  “Let's go.”

  “Aren't you gonna pay?”

  Lary looked past my shoulders at the people walking in the far distance around the warehouse then lifted his eyebrows. “One of The Nation's promises.”

  “Free food?”

  “Say those words and you've got the whole world in your hands.”

  I snickered, but stopped to give what he said a thoughtful moment. It wasn't funny. It was sad, really. Frightening how people would fall for anything. Idiots.

  We walked out and all of a sudden, alarms started to blare in the warehouse. I was expecting someone to chase us and feel hands tackling me down to take me right back where I started to meet the end I escaped, but...no one came for us.

  The second we approached the black hearse, Lary threw the dusty bag in the back and drove off the moment I closed my door.

  “Free food?!” I barked, catching on to him.

  “Hey, if you believed me, that's your fault. We just had a conversation about food expenses and how this province in Borealia can't afford actual stores.”

  My nose flared. “Why didn't you pay-”

  “Do I look like I'd have the Mark?”

  “The Mark?”

  Momental silence.

  “It's a fresh idea The Nation is starting to enforce. Getting The Mark is like having a credit card during Old Nation times. You know what those are?”

  “Yeah, I wasn't born yesterday.”

  Momental silence.

  “It's a fresh idea the Gov is starting to enforce. You get the Mark, and every sitting expense you owe is swept under the rug until you meet The End.”

  “The End?”

  “When they capture you and...”

  “Skin you?”

  “More than that...”

  “You wouldn't get The Mark to survive?” I hesitated to ask after some time.

  “Why would I do that when I have connections?”

  “Like?”

  “You see anyone chase after us back there?”

  I sat back quietly with no reply. He'd done it again.

  “There's nothing worse than a man willing to sell his Xi for comfort.”

  I knew what he meant by Xi, although I knew nowhere near as much as I know about it presently. I thought being Xi meant being cool, and talented and...what's that word Lary said so often? Right. Unique. And it was, but it is so much more.

  “There is,” I argued.

  “And, what's that?”

  “A girl with non-stop questions.”

  He laughed. “You got me on that.”

  Silence suffocated us.

  “You're alright.”

  “Back 'atcha.”

  “Your colloquialism needs a little touching up, but you'll be fine-”

  “My wha-”

  “Colloquialism. Your language style. You sound like you've been around-”

  “Don't say it,” I hissed. He stared out the windshield and I did the same. “My mom was a Mutual-is a Mutual,” I said, crushing my eyes tight.

  I thought about slapping myself across the face for admitting something so blasphemous, but I had already made myself look foolish enough in the hours I spent with him up to that point.

  For the record, a Mutual is a cross between being a Norm, a regular citizen of the Nation, and a Follower, the Dickens diehards. A lot of people in CU were Mutuals. They're basically the people trying out the Tri-Life theory, but still applying their own life choices to their lifestyles. They're partially committed Followers, you could say. I knew why my mom chose to become a Mutual, but she didn't have to worry anymore. Her reason was gone. So far gone.

  “Name?”

  “Me?” I heard my voice crack.

  He looked over at me incredulously.

  “It's Bleu.”

  “Like the color?”

  “My mom spelled it wrong.”

  “Cutter?”

  “Yeah...”

  Suddenly, I didn't want to talk, at least not about my mother being a cutter. Suddenly, I just hated the thought of forming then speaking words.

  “My mother spelled mine wrong, too. It's Lary with one 'r'.”

  I looked over at him.

  “There are two hypothetical explanations that validate her reasoning behind the misspelling. For one, I'm sure my mother was also a cutter who couldn't spell...”

  “And?” I asked, growing impatient.

  “I, uh...I had a twin named Gary. She might've spelled it wrong because of him.”

  “What happened?” I barely asked.

  “...He...well, he got captured early. He was brilliant. At seven, he had invented unbelievable things that could've innovated our world.”

  “Like?”

  It almost appeared like Lary had closed his eyes behind the wheel to experience a better visual depiction of the past, like closing his eyes would transport him back to those moments with Gary, but he never came closer than a drawn out blink.

  “I can't remember...I remember...but only bits and pieces of things I couldn't fully comprehend.”

  I didn't ask him anything else. It was an understandably touchy subject.

  “What about you? Any past baggage besides that horrendous escape damage?”

  “Is that like the word horrible?”

  “Exactly like it. You're smart, aren't you?”

  “More street smart...I stayed in school. I didn't want to be a cutter like...”

  “I know. I don't rescue Xi dropouts.”

  I wasn't afraid or shocked by his reply. People of The Nation had strange ways of finding out everything about anything or anyone they pleased. That's one of the reasons why Josh became so popular at school. Data hackers were top of the societal pyramid; secretly, of course. The Gov would vaporize anyone who even looked like a data hacker. If you didn't work for The Gov, you had no business doing transnational media exchanges with people in other provinces or nations of any kind.

  “You have figured out why we went to the warehouse, correct?”

  I shut my eyes, hoping that wasn't a trick question. “To...get food?”

  He remained patient. “I wanted you to see the potential state of our world for yourself. I'll be teaching you how to survive and I don't want you learning to do anything for a world that you don't believe needs to be fought for so...”

  I waited for him to go on for moments on end. Inside, I was begging him to go on, but we ended the night the way it started: in pure silence. I shrunk in the passenger seat. There was so much I wanted to know, so much I didn't know, and couldn't find out on my own. And, who did I have to blame for that? That's right: my mom and The System. The two sources that I was always taugh
t to rely on were the very backstabbers that failed me. They had the entire story yet only the care for me to explain half, and, of all halves, the half that only included the basic English language and numbers from one to ten.

  I walked in close by Lary's side and the place was silent, dark, and empty.

  “Do the other guys leave at night?”

  “To their rooms.” Lary pointed at the room on the left of the flat neighboring a small closed off kitchen. A smudged white door shut off the inside of the room from view.

  “Your room's the open one there.”

  The other, my room, was straight ahead from where we stood just behind the sitting room furnished with two saggy couches facing each other, large lounge chairs beside each, and a colorful tribal rug beneath the dirty glass table in the center.

  “Where's yours?” I smiled curiously.

  “Go to your room.”

  “Fine.” I snapped my fingers as I swung my arms back and forth-the most exercise I'd ever done ever-and walked forward.

  That about Lary frustrated me. How he refused to answer the simplest questions. There were three rooms in the place-I was bound to find out eventually. I hated to figure things out, and he knew that from the start, I believe. I appreciate what he did now, but back then I didn't understand his tactics.

  I entered the room slow, just knowing one of those boys were waiting for me in the dark. I turned on the room light and searched endlessly. No hiding boys in sight. Wow...

  Like so many other times in my laggard life, I fell asleep in my day clothes, and like always I was without a goodnight from anyone. I had been without all my life. Josh used to tease me all the time with this word he told me he made up to describe me. Deprived was the word. He called me Deprived Dalton all throughout pre-YA. I was too embarrassed to ask what it meant, but I was sure it had something to do with lacking things. I thought Josh was so smart. One day, I used to tell myself, he'd teach me all he knew. I was so sure that day would come years ago, but now, not only was I deprived of a real existence and night clothes, I was deprived of a lover and a friend...and I hated that thought.

  I looked around the room and happiness filled my heart that I had the room to myself. At least privacy wasn't something that I would be deprived of in this new life. Then, I really hoped I hadn't kicked someone out of their room so that I could have my own space. Even I would hate me for that, and if I had been kicked out for a newbie...

  I started to expect hell the next day.

  SEVEN