A Slice of Unkindness

  Copyright © 2018 Kathleen Florio

  All Rights Reserved

  Year of the Book

  135 Glen Avenue

  Glen Rock, PA 17327

  Print ISBN:978-1-949150-40-7

  Ebook ISBN:978-1-949150-41-4

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Chapter 1

  ”He is one of a warren”

  “Hide me!” he demanded breathlessly as he burst through the door and slammed it behind him with a clatter of bells.

  The proprietor of the establishment looked up. She was a tall, thin woman with narrow features, raven-colored straight hair pulled back into a harsh bun and riveting black eyes set in powder white skin. Her reading spectacles were balanced on the end of her long, beak like nose. He got the distinct impression he was gazing upon a crow in human form.

  She had been poring over an ancient, thick book until his sudden appearance. “Why?” she inquired tartly.

  He was panting so hard he barely heard her. “What?” he puffed.

  “I said, ‘why’?” she repeated in stern impatience. “What kind of trouble are you in?”

  He gulped and took a few deep breaths. “Bullies!” he gasped. “They won’t come in here. Bullies don’t read.”

  Her thin eyebrows hopped briefly. She aimed a quick glance outside the display window of the shop. Her eyes focused on something beyond him, outside the store. She frowned deeply. “You wanna rethink that last statement?”

  His breath caught in his throat.

  She relented with a sigh and a frown. “Very well,” she said grudgingly. “I absolutely detest bullies. Hide in that chest.”

  She nodded to what looked like a pirate’s treasure chest on the floor by the counter and made no move to assist him.

  He bolted for the chest, threw open the lid and tossed himself inside. It smelled of old books and mothballs. He dropped the top over his head just as the door bells jangled again. Cautiously he cracked open the lid. He saw his nemesis, who everyone called Jack, remove the breathing mask from his pock-marked face and swagger his way to the raven lady who had barely moved.

  “Where is he?” Jack demanded.

  “Where is who?” the lady said just as sternly as before.

  “My little brother,” Jack lied. “He’s in trouble. My Da told me to bring him back for a whuppin’.”

  He saw the lady’s sharp, black eyes scan Jack up and down. Her one eyebrow rose sharply, guessing this was no relation whatsoever to the boy hiding in the chest.

  “I saw him come in here. Hand him over!”

  “No,” the lady said curtly as she flipped the page and turned back to the book she was reading.

  “Then will you give him a message from me?’ Jack said.

  “No,” she repeated.

  Jack was taken aback. “Excuse me?” He placed his palms on the counter and leaned toward her in a threatening way. It was his turn to get irritated.

  From where he crouched within the depths of the chest, the boy could see Jack inflating himself, trying to look bigger and scarier than he already was.

  But the lady of the shop was not intimidated in the least. She aimed her narrow gaze back up at Jack in growing irritation. She sighed and straightened up. “Apparently you are deaf as well as exceedingly rude,” she told him. “I can tolerate the one but not the other. I said no. I am not a messenger boy. And you will leave my shop now.”

  A gun was suddenly in her right hand, aimed at Jack’s belly. It looked to be an Old West six-shooter with some alterations in brass.

  “I will not ask again,” she told him.

  Jack took a step back. Then he smirked and laughed. “You wouldn’t shoot me! I’m just a kid,” he taunted.

  “I don’t like children,” the lady said and fired off a warning shot. It ricocheted around the room in five different directions before exploding a plant in a hanging pot right next to Jack’s head. He jerked his arms up around his face, ducked and was splattered with plant guts and potting soil.

  Quietly, calmly, the lady adjusted a dial on the gun and re-aimed it, this time at Jack’s head. “The only time I miss is when I mean to. This librarian has killed more people than you have fingers and toes. Leave my shop now if you want to live.”

  She pulled back the hammer smoothly with her thumb. The ease with which she did this spoke of years of experience with firearms.

  “I can’t abide liars. This is not your lucky day, Jack.”

  The hooligan before her glowered then left.

  “I’ll be back,” he growled sullenly and replaced his breathing mask before exiting into the poisonous mist.

  “Good!” the lady replied turning calmly back to her book. “Bessie would enjoy that.” And she waved the gun for emphasis.

  He slammed the door behind him and the bells clanged in protest of the harsh treatment.

  She sighed and shook her head. Then she turned to the chest.

  “You can come out now,” she told him.

  Cautiously he cracked open the lid of the chest and looked around. Slowly he clambered out.

  She had turned back to the book.

  “Thank you,” he said and fervently meant it.

  She only shrugged. “So what’s your name?” she asked and flipped another page.

  “Warren,” he replied.

  “I said name not occupation,” she quipped.

  “I’m telling the truth. That’s the only name anyone has ever called me,” he replied.

  She grunted. “Well, it fits you. You came bursting into my shop like a scared rabbit.”

  He felt himself flush red. “I am not a rabbit!” he insisted.

  She grunted again. “Whatever. What’s your surname?” She meant to trip him up. A child of ten years shouldn’t know what ‘surname’ meant.

  But he knew. “Corbie,” he answered.

  Her book was suddenly forgotten. Her head snapped up and she stared dazed into the space before her. “Warren Corbie?” she said slowly.

  “Mmm hmm,” he mumbled.

  She swiveled her head to look at him again. But this time it was more than a cursory glance She took him in from head to toe, every detail from his tousled, sandy blond hair and ice blue eyes to the smattering of freckles across his nose to his shabby, torn clothes and worn shoes with his toes poking out and lack of mask or goggles so necessary for negotiating the slowly lethal outdoors. She wrinkled her nose in distaste of his smell.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” Warren said, trying to be polite. Her eyebrow twitched. “But do you really hate children?”

  Her eyebrows bobbed again. “Yes,” she said. “I find them useless. They’re loud. They’re messy and disrespectful. Their hands are always sticky. They have no sense of hygiene. They break things. They think the whole world revolves around them.”

  Warren smiled as he took all this in. He smiled because he understood.

  “Do you hate all children?” he asked.

  Her brow furrowed as she pondered his inquiry. “Not all,” she replied. “I like those who read. But those are few and far between nowadays.” She said the last sentence with a wistful sigh and a shake of her head.

  “I like to read,” Warren said.

  She looked at him again, once more noting the wrinkled and unkempt attire the boy wore. “Do you now?” she said in a doubtful tone. “Then tell me, Warren Corbie, what does the sign out front of my establishment say?”

  Warren’s face screwed up in confusion. “You mean the, ‘I am not a lemming!’ part?”

/>   She snorted in scorn. “No! Not the graffiti!” she huffed. “Under it! The real, actual sign!”

  “Oh that part!” He laughed. And then Warren smiled and proudly recited, “Professor Edgar A. P., Scholar of Lost Languages and Collector of Rare & Unique Tomes of Antiquity.” His smile deepened and he added. “I love books!”

  She actually laughed briefly at this. Her face softened when she smiled and she almost seemed pretty. She waved an arm about her. “Well then, Warren my boy,” she said. “What do you think of my little shop?”

  Warren took a look about him and gasped. He had been too frightened before to take everything in. But now he gazed about in wonder. His eyes fell upon worn-out shelves, sagging under the weight of all the old books. He took a deep breath. The air smelled like wisdom and history, magic and mystery. It gave him goosebumps.

  “This is fantastic!” He breathed. “And they’re books! Not computer files. I want to read every single one!”

  Again the lady laughed.

  “I have,” she boasted. “Well almost. I’m working on the last few ones.” Here she patted the book before her. “I’ve spent my entire life collecting these. I still have the very first book I bought, The Colt From Moon Mountain. It’s quite ancient from First Earth.”

  He gazed in amazement at her. And then his face creased in confusion. “You own this place?”

  She nodded.

  “But,” he stammered. “The sign out front says Edgar.”

  “I’m Edgar,” she said.

  His look of confusion only increased. “But… Edgar… is a boy’s name.”

  “Yeah, well Pop thought boys were better,” she grumbled. “So my mom dressed me like a boy for almost all of my childhood. It worked for the most part. Until I hit puberty. By then, the name had stuck.”

  The conversation tripped into an uncomfortable silence. Warren noticed the mess the exploded plant had made. He started to scoop up the soil with his hands. She told him where to find a broom and dustpan. Edgar pretended not to watch him as he cleaned up.

  He then came back to survey his handiwork with fists on his hips and nodded. He looked about at the floor around him.

  Warren stood there awkwardly for a moment and then blurted out, “Can I… may I… stay here?”

  Edgar’s head snapped up in shock.

  “You won’t even know I’m here,” he hurriedly continued before she could say anything. “I’m ever so quiet. I’ll sweep the place every day when you’re not here and dust the shelves. At night I’ll find a dark corner to sleep in. And I can feed myself. You won’t have to pay me. I’m not like other kids. Please? I just want to read all the books. Like you.”

  Edgar cleared her throat noisily as she composed the words she would say. “I’m sure your parents would miss you after a day or two…”

  Warren bit his lip and really began to stammer at this. “Not really. It’s just… I don’t have… parents. They died when I was a baby… I suppose. I don’t even remember what they look like.”

  Edgar was silent for a long moment.

  “Then… where do you live?” She knew his answer would do nothing but heighten her apprehension. And she already had a sneaky suspicion of what the answer might be.

  She was not disappointed.

  “Well… I was born at Miss Madeline’s Home for Misguided Misfits and Foundlings.”

  Edgar felt what little color she had in her face drain away.

  The commercials on the tube all said Madeline’s was a glorious place to educate and raise orphans and a virtual paradise for the feeble minded. But she knew the truth.

  The ‘home’ was really nothing of the sort. It was more a gilded insane asylum and workhouse. Edgar knew of several brilliant people who had spoken out against the establishment and their rather well to do families had suddenly been admitted and the details had been quickly hushed up. Everyone knew the truth about Madeline’s Home. But nobody was allowed to speak ill of the place. It was government funded.

  “I don’t like it there,” Warren told her. “So I keep running away. They keep catching me and beating me up… Jack and the other supervisors that is… but I can always break out. Jack says that next time will be different. That he’ll make it so I never break out again. Please! I don’t wanna go back there!”

  Edgar sighed and frowned. “I don’t like kids!” she reiterated weakly.

  Warren smiled. “Neither do I.”

  Edgar’s frown deepened and she chewed on her lower lip. The boy said he liked books.

  “Fine! You can stay,” she relented. “But one bit of trouble outta you and I’ll deliver you back to that horrid place myself!”

  Warren’s face broke into a huge smile. He raced to the broom closet and grabbed a duster and bolted for the back corner of the shop. “You won’t be sorry about this, Edgar… er… Professor!” he beamed. “I promise! I’ll work really hard! I’ll have this place looking prettier than the ancient library in old Dublin on First Earth! You’ll see. You won’t regret it!”

  Edgar smiled and shook her head. “Then why am I already sorry?”

  Later that night Edgar came to check on him. She found him nestled high on a shelf behind the rolling ladder tucked in between prehistoric history and the ancient history of the British Isles. An old book lay open under his hand. Quietly she managed to wiggle it out without waking him. Using the hand lantern on her wristwatch, she peered in curiosity at what he had last read before dropping off to sleep. It was an account on the life of the Celtic chieftain Boudicca.

  Edgar smiled.

  “You weren’t supposed to come to me, boy,” Edgar whispered softly. “All this was never supposed to happen. You and I don’t exist. It’s safer that way.” She cast her eyes upward and out the front window to the perpetual midnight fog that passed for atmosphere on this god-forsaken planet. “Now I’m gonna have to ruffle some feathers. And that never goes well.”

  Chapter 2

  “So you dinna’ feed the wee lad?”

  A beautiful woman with snow white skin, frosted with freckles and shockingly, long red ringlets, bent over the slumbering boy in the stacks.

  “Um… he said he could feed himself,” Edgar told the woman.

  “Tsk!” she chided. “And ya believed ’im?” She shook her head and aimed a scolding glance at her partner. “Lads never wanna worry their caretakers, whoever they may be.”

  The red-haired woman held the lantern closer. It may have been early morning but the sun’s rays barely cut through the thick layers of fog outside the shop.

  “Ya dinna even give ’im a scrap of clot’ for a blanket?” she continued. “Did ya no tink ’e might be cold?”

  Edgar stammered something useless.

  The redhead clucked her tongue and shook her head. “Do ya nae ’ave a scrap of tha mother in ya?”

  Edgar sniffed defensively. “You’ve always been better at the nurturing thing, Morris,” Edgar replied. “I just figured you’d take one look at him and… do your thing.”

  The redhead called Morris scoffed. “If I’d ’ave known, I’d come ’ome from me shift at ta clinic earlier. ’E’s just a wee little street urchin, underfed and unloved. Ya say ’e come from Madeline’s?”

  Edgar nodded. “Burst into my shop, no mask or goggles, terrified of the thugs chasing him.”

  Morris clucked again. “I’m amazed ’is naked eyes could read ta sign! Poor little blighter! Never ya mind. I’ll get ’im cleaned up, fed and fattened. Then some atmospheric antidotes into ’im and maybe ’e’ll still ’ave ’is peepers by ta time ’e comes of age.”

  Edgar breathed a sigh of relief. “I knew you’d patch him up properly. You’re a miracle worker at the clinic. Or so everyone says.”

  “Appealing to me ego will nae save ya!” Morris admonished. “Best go and fill the tub! I’m not havin’ ’im settin’ at me table, stinkin’ ta way ’e do!”

  Edgar frowned but did as Morris bid. She filled the large, claw footed, porcelain tub in the washroom
at the back of the shop and pulled out every soap, liquid, powder, bar or any other sweet smelling elixir she could find. A stray thought ran through her head that the boy might just use them all. She shook her head again and headed for the kitchen.

  She heard Morris rouse the Warren and send him off to bathe. She turned the dial and raised the lights in the kitchen. Morning or not, it was still very dim in any room in the shop. Edgar busied herself with brewing a large pot of black tea for the three of them and setting the table. Soon Morris joined her. She tied back her long, red curls, donned an apron and set about making a large breakfast. Edgar fixed herself a cup of tea; black, no cream or sugar with only a tiny spot of rare, precious honey from an off-world planet, and set to reading the daily news on the small Babbage device.

  “Why do ya bother with tat drivel?” Morris clucked. “Everyone knows ta media is government funded! They only tell what they want ya ta believe.”

  “Then I’ll be well informed on their lies and know to believe the opposite,” Edgar replied.

  It was true the government on Castor 5 was corrupt. What was reported was rarely the truth. But the web of lies the ruling classes, or dekas—short for decadents, fed the drones was so complex, it was like a coded message. This was exactly the reason Edgar read the news. It was like a game to her, better than any crossword puzzle and more complex than a good battle of chess. She had her sources and Edgar could generally find out the truth of the matter if she paid good coin for it on the black market. The economy was as murky as the poisonous fog outside her windows.

  Nothing flowed easily on the planet and most things were unpleasant unless you were a government official. Castor 5 was small, colonized because its poisonous fumes from its many volcanoes could be synthesized into fuel. Life below the crust was safer than above but only the dekas were permitted to live there. On the surface every home but the most poor had air purification vents just within each door. Venturing outside meant wearing a mask to protect eyes and assist breathing. As a result, masks and breathing apparatus had become a status and fashion symbol. The more ornate the mask, the better off one was financially. Those who went without any face coverage eventually suffered from the caustic atmosphere. First they would lose their sight and their skin would become pock-marked from the air. Sterility and death by thirty years of age would claim those who continued to go without protection from the fog.