Conform or Suffer: The Darkness of Beauty

Chapter 16 An Unacceptable Woman

"Give me your money now," the man said to Quig.

The woman running the indoor market rushed through. Hempstead and three other villagers tossed the thief to the ground.

"Take him in the truck and give him to the workhouse," she said.

"You can't do that," the man said.

"We gave you food, shelter, and a chance to work. Squad members take our citizens regularly, so sometimes we give them criminals who actually deserve it." She waved her hand, and villagers dragged the man off. "Quig, are you injured?" she asked.

"Nope... I'm fine." He steadied himself.

She offered him water from a tiny jug, and a tent village medic examined him. He filled out a witness form, and a village official took it.

Customers took photos with her, and she struck a pose, mocking the pro-workhouse adverts.

Her calico-cat-like face twitched as she walked behind the order table, and her tail stuck through her muted green dress.

"I'm glad you survived the storm." He purchased blankets, dried fruit, and pallets of additional groceries, grown and canned in the tent village. He slipped the paper between her fingers. "I'm ordering blankets for next winter, while I still have the cash to pay for them. The government can't take my teacher's pay, but the small press publisher kept our checks because of my status change."

"Quig, I received my second badge last week."

"If we're not being paid by a dishonest publisher, I might as well give my next book away digitally." He slid a USB stick and cash to her. "You're still my favorite editor."

"I'll email you my suggestions." Hempstead nodded and examined his order and the manuscript.

"Did everyone in the village survive the storm?" Quig asked.

"Our village slept in the barn, but others weren't as lucky. Fifty victims in the workhouses froze to death because they only heated the factory floor and the children's dorms." She hit the table and her full register vibrated.

Quig leaned closer to her. "I'll transform my laundry room into a bedroom for you."

Hempstead patted his hand. "No, I became this community's leader. My job is to keep the thieves out and our markets running. Besides, both your father and Dot have already offered."

They chatted for a while, and she loaded his station wagon.

Quig added the blankets and dried fruit to his donation boxes, along with the peppermint drops he bought earlier, and he left packages in a dozen workhouse donation bins.

He took his groceries home and left the non-perishables in his storage closet.

With medicine created in 3D food and med printers, the taste didn't matter, but for edibles, the machines were best at printing ingredients, not meals. 3D printed food tasted best mixed with real ingredients, so the palate would be fooled into thinking the meal was not prepared from vitamin-rich fungus and bacteria grown and processed inside the fridge-sized red metal machine. Packaging and medical objects were forged in another part of the printer and recycled from discarded glass, wood, cardboard, and rags.

His groceries could last for years. The emergency food supply would be useful with the rising prices because of his new broken elite status.

He knew his privilege, to have regular meals, a job, and a warm apartment, but he gulped the cold lingering within his lungs. Mental images dwelled on his sister, her arrest, and his bitter loneliness. 'Ida, I wish you'd call me,' he thought.

Quig spent most of the week alone, cooking, reading, and grading papers after school, except for when Grew-Ella dragged him over to her parents for Sunday lunch, and then they went to her apartment afterward to hang out. Her apartment complex was once a motel, the type yanked out of nightmares and often used as backdrops in crime dramas and horror movies.

He entered as Grew-Ella was folding up her cot.

No walls surrounded her bathroom, but multi-layered plastic curtains flowed around a tiny toilet. A wrench replaced the knob to turn the icy water over a bucket tub.

Her antique plate hutch leaned on warped bookshelves filled with writing-style books, jars of colored sand, and her childhood toys.

Beach paintings and hand-drawn comics covered only half the spots where rose-colored paint flaked onto the stained carpet.

"You're not going to beat my score," Grew-Ella said.

Her holographic TV transformed her room. They blasted cartoon spaceships for an hour and turned off the game.

She danced around her living room. "I won three out of five."

Quig danced too, and he forgot he was miserable. Rats scurried across his penny loafers.

He jumped on her tea table, knocking into a collection of seashells, the game controllers, and a gold typewriter. "I swear those hideous creatures were carrying shanks."

"They're one of the many guests the university apartment manager neglected to inform me about. I spent a small fortune evicting the flies." She sat on her patched couch and stretched. "Mom begged me to move back, but I signed a two-year lease with the school. I'm privileged to rent this apartment and no longer worry that workhouse board members will visit."

Quig stayed longer than normal, trying to connect those happy moments. He sat in a chair next to her and read over her homemade comic strip.

Grew-Ella snatched the cartoon. It was a ghostly drawing of herself, in chains, with the words Conform or Suffer scribbled on it. She ripped her art to shreds. "I could be arrested if the authorities found my protest comic."

"I won't tell." Quig located another of Grew-Ella's hand-drawn comics. It featured a bunny woman picnicked with a feral rat. A speech bubble floated above the grinning rat's head. You barely earned acceptable status, but you'll have me forever.

"Am I the rat?" he asked.

She pressed his arm down, and the cartoon strip fell. "No, you aren't. I enjoy having you around."

"You should publish this."

"Publishing isn't my dream. I love teaching and editing."

They dug inside her fridge and prepared garbage salads with leftovers.

Hours later, Quig climbed into his station wagon alone.

Two billboards advertising Zill fell during the storm, and Kindness Rebels erected new ones.

Moth-shaped lanterns lit Glow Street as he drove past a snow globe shop and three bookstores. Split and fallen trees blocked the road, and Quig changed directions.

Surgery parlors lined each side of Perfection Street, bandaged customers rushing in and out of buildings repurposed from failed fast-food chains.

He shuddered, his hands gripping the steering wheel, fingers digging into the black leather. New billboards that mocked his unacceptable sister were plastered on the building where Ida received her botched surgery, and his happy moments faded.