1/2986 Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Other Books

  Dedication

  Woods

  Zero

  Day One

  Day Two

  Day Three

  Day Four

  Day Seven

  Winter

  Probation

  Snow

  Gypsy

  Kaissa

  Train

  Dogs

  Cold

  Waking

  Katvar

  Farewell

  City

  Party

  Apprenticeship

  Epilogue

  Book 2 - Fog

  Q&A

  Extras

  Acknowledgements

  Featured Author

  1/2986

  by

  Annelie Wendeberg

  Copyright 2014 by Annelie Wendeberg

  Amazon Edition

  This is a work of fiction. Characters, places, and names in this book are products of the author’s imagination. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the copyright owner.

  Many thanks to Ben Howard for beautiful writing music!

  Cover and interior design by Annelie Wendeberg

  Books by this author:

  Mickaela Capra Series:

  1/2986

  fog

  Anna Kronberg Series:

  The Devil’s Grin

  The Fall

  The Journey

  Moriarty

  The Lion’s Courtship

  Find out more at:

  www.anneliewendeberg.com

  To my children, Béla & Lina

  Part One — Woods

  At night, I open the window

  and ask the moon to come

  and press its face against mine

  Breathe into me

  Jalal ad-Din Mohammad Rumi

  The clock on the wall shows 12:01. Twelve hours left to live, minus one minute. No drama. We all are going to die, and I’m overdue anyway. An exhale of relief will rumble through my village when they find me tomorrow morning. Maybe Zula will miss me a little. I hope he does. A few tears shed would be nice, just so I know I wasn’t a total waste of space. But then, I’ll never know.

  Actually, I’m surprised I’m still here. One could say I’m a coward who doesn’t dare press the blade deep enough. But that’s not the entire truth. If hope didn’t bug me, life would be simpler. And shorter. In my case, shorter is better. But I’m naïve enough to hope the last day of school might magically turn my dismal grades into excellent ones, so that the city council forgets my wrong gender and wrong past, and allows me to be the new turbinehouse keeper. I would have a future. But even the best grades won’t convince them to allow another generation of Capras to soil this honourable occupation, excellent skills or not.

  I’m thinking of my knife’s tip wedged in the hollow between bone and tendon of my wrist. I’m thinking of opening an artery, of life draining from me, and I’m growing calmer. People around me fade. I’ve already cut off most of myself. But I forget when.

  I catch myself hoping to meet my brother and my grandfather tonight. My heart flutters. Of course it’s all nonsense. When you’re dead, you’re dead. Depending on how your body is processed, you either end up as ash, or as worm poop.

  If Grandfather were still alive, he’d call what happened to my life after my brother died “hell,” earning him a public whipping for using a banned word. He was a rebellious guy, always talking about the Great Pandemic and how he kicked ass, then, how he stopped kicking ass when Grandmother died and he raised Mother all by himself.

  When I was little and sat on his lap and no one else was listening, he dared talk about God — an old guy who made the first two humans from clay. Since then, the word “God” tastes of clay, although the sound of it is more round and fruity, like an overripe tomato, maybe. Grandfather also talked about his parents a lot, my great-grandparents, who believed our souls are all going to this place called “hell,” where we are eternally burned, or put on a stake, or gutted, or whatever.

  I have no idea why people back then thought this stuff would make any sense. Maybe that’s why religions are illegal now? But there’s still tons of stuff around today that doesn’t make sense to me at all, and yet everyone thinks it’s cool.

  Grandfather believed in God. He didn’t really care much about rules, and that’s why I loved him. Neither of us fit in.

  For me, the fitting-in begins with the stupidest things; for example, the ability to stand with a group of giggly girls who talk about boys. It’s considered the coolest activity since we turned twelve or thirteen and the game always has the same outcome: the more men you can attract, the better. No one seems to notice how embarrassing it is to climb the social ladder simply by being the most fuckable female. Maybe I’m thinking this because I’m at the very bottom rung, but I can’t imagine that the whole circus looks any more logical from a higher vantage point.

  I know I’m not good with people. But I’m not sure if it’s because I don’t like them or why I don’t like them.

  The one thing I’m good at is fixing machines, especially turbines. The word “turbine” has the taste of hot pancakes with melting butter and treacle. Turbines always do what I want them to do. Maybe they like my hands. Being up at the reservoir or inside a turbine duct makes me insanely happy. The smell of grease makes me happy, too. I tasted it once, but it wasn’t good. Its sting didn’t leave my mouth for days.

  Maybe turbines are my main reason to pull the plug: once I finish school, I won’t be allowed to play with machines anymore. I’d be assigned a real job. Every time people call what I’m doing “playing,” I could scream. The word “play” tastes of burned oak; ash. Although it sounds almost liquid in my ears. Like a sudden splash on a still surface.

  Everyone believes I’m stupid. I tried to be better. I really did. Every first morning of a new school year, I told myself that this year, I’ll do it. This year, I’ll work my arse off (although I don’t really have one to begin with), I’ll do my homework on time (or at all), will daydream less (or not at all), and will be thinking so hard that my brain bleeds out through my nose (if that’s even possible).

  Every second morning of a school year, I knew I would only be myself.

  Today, my grades won’t improve either. I haven’t learned a thing. I tried but… I’m a scatterbrain.

  Hope dies last, they say. I hate hope; the bitch keeps screwing me. If I were alive tomorrow, the council would assign me a job at the composting facility — the stupidest activity there is — even more brainless than street sweeping and picking weeds from the cracks in the pavement. I’d shovel the shit of every inhabitant, every cow, cat, sheep, and goat, from one container to the next, aerating and judging its ripeness before it goes out on the fields. It takes three years for fresh poop to turn into good compost. Piss is collected, stored, and sprayed on the fields every spring, but shit needs treatment. And that’s all I’d need to know to excel at this job. One gets what one deserves. I wouldn’t mind as long as people let me be. My parents do mind, though. I’m like the ugly mole on Father’s nose, making him cross-eyed and sick, and Mother’s fingers itching to slap at it.

  The word “mole” feels furry on my tongue.

  I squeeze my eyes shut and imagine my hand holding out my quivering school certificate to Mother and Father — a few moments before dinner is on the table — and I wonder how they’ll respond this time. The word “certificate” runs bitterly down my throat. My ass cheeks burn with knowledge. Will my parents feel sorry when they find me in the morning? The th
ing is I do care, although there’s no reason for it.

  Right now, I’m at a place I’d rather not be. I’m standing in a line of naked girls in the blistering hot town hall. My bare feet happily leak heat into the stone floor. Beads of sweat form along my spine. I’m itching. All windows and doors are closed. Someone must be worried we could oxidise if fresh air were allowed to blow in.

  The room is divided by a long curtain, so we girls don’t get to see the naked boys and the boys don’t get to see us naked girls. As if we’ve never seen a prick.

  Two women — a physician and a nurse — prod, ask questions, and take notes. I have no clue why old Zula doesn’t do this. He’s good at all kinds of things, from delivering babies to curing whooping cough. He can even do cesareans on Lampit’s milk goats. Strangely, no one feels the need to enlighten us as to why our physician has been replaced by two strangers from the city. No one even asks. Not the other girls, anyway. I did, but all I got as a response were two sets of raised eyebrows.

  I hate to be naked. I want to hide my skin, press my back against the wall, at least, or magically let my hair grow to waist-length to cover the worst.

  The doctor walks up to me and palpates my abdomen, her eyes raking over the scars on my arms, chest, and legs. Then she asks me to turn around. I set my chin and shake my head no.

  She places her hands on my shoulders and tries to force me to turn. I lock my knees and knock her hands off me. No one gets to see my back. ‘Pull yourself together, Mickaela,’ she hisses.

  ‘Piss off,’ I mouth.

  She gives me a cold stare and then nods to the nurse. My chin trembles when both whip me around.

  They freeze, cough, and pat my shoulder without a word or further examination. My stomach slowly settles back to its usual position. The cramp in my throat loosens.

  The two move on to the next girl, who doesn’t seem to have noticed anything out of the normal. My classmates aren’t completely blind or ignorant. It’s just me being…invisible.

  I cast a shy glance to my right where the other girls stand — waiting, smiling, looking pretty. I’m all bones with a scrubby mop of orange hair and freckles that look like fly shit all over my face.

  Anyway, here’s the deal: I see boobs. Seven beautiful pairs. Large ones, perky ones, apple-sized ones. I don’t need to look down at my own chest to know there’s nothing. Both the doctor and the nurse point it out for me, perhaps believing I’ve not noticed. When they ask everyone how regular our menses is, all I can say is, ‘Every fifteen years. Maybe.’

  The doctor doesn’t seem to approve of my humour. She eyes me over her brown-rimmed glasses as though she wants to strangle me with the stethoscope. But nothing happens. She turns to one of the other girls who holds her chin high, chest pushed out, stomach sucked in.

  Apparently, queuing up is the thing here; it shows some kind of order or hierarchy that, so far, hasn’t revealed its deeper meaning to me. I’ve lined up so often in my life I’m unable to count it. Line up for food rations, for examinations, for roll call, for community work. That I’m the last in line is normal, expected, just like snow in winter. I have no idea who decided this.

  We get dressed and, still in line, march to school to take the last two exams. It’s only a hundred metres or so, but I’m already soaked with sweat. My scalp itches from fear when we reach the classroom. Four teachers stand guard, one in every corner of the room, making sure we don’t cheat.

  Again we form a line, file in, sit down, and a number of sheets are placed face-down in front of us. A shrill whistle and everyone turns the first page. I can’t help looking up, wondering what’s going on in people’s heads.

  Constance’s head is right in front of me, her black braids parting her hair, a white line zigzagging along the middle of her skull, red ribbons resting on her shoulders. She’s so pretty, most boys are in love with her.

  Marreesh’s head is to my left, also black-haired. His curly bangs are hanging low over his forehead, almost touching his desk as he rubs his eyes and digs in his brain, desperate to find answers to the test questions. In all these years, I’ve rarely heard him speak. The sound of his name tastes of pear, slightly acidic, but sugary sweet with a soft grit on my tongue.

  A few months ago, I almost asked him to marry me because Marreesh seemed like a good compromise. I’m sure he’d be fine with never having sex.

  Everyone happily gets married when they are fifteen; most girls start popping out kids when they are sixteen. If there’s no unmarried man available for a girl, then she’ll be a second wife. No womb is left unfertilised — survival of the species crap.

  I’d be a second wife to one of Father’s old buddies, a guy with a hard face and hard hands. Out of the rain and into the gutters. It doesn’t concern me anymore.

  I wipe the sweat off my forehead and look up at the blackboard. “History Finals” is written there, in case it slipped our memory. The sun shines through the high windows, beams sharp and white, glittering with dust motes — beauty no one notices.

  Going to school is like switching off everything that makes me a person as soon as I enter the building. I’ve never been able to handle it. Everyone else seems to enjoy being part of the herd and repeating what the teachers say word by word. Baaah baaah. And I — even with my brain on full throttle and ready to race around the trickiest corners — rarely understand what precisely the teachers want from me.

  But my brain on full throttle is still only a Micka brain. I wish I could get out of my head. But on it goes, my funny little brain, never focussing on one task only, always playing with lots of things simultaneously, drifting in and out of past, present, and potential future. Sending me flavours where there are none. What a useless organ. I wonder if a large bird stole me from somewhere far away and dropped me here, wrinkled and screaming at the top of my newborn lungs.

  A soft squeaking pulls my attention to my right. The history teacher paces the aisle and looks down at our desks. My pencil hovers over an empty page. He stumbles when he passes me, his sandals singing a quiet and sour squee squee when rubbing across the floor. I hope I’ll never see him again. The homework he made us do was so bland, I never did it until a minute before class began. He always asked us to underline the most important phrases in specific chapters of our history books. I don’t think I ever read any of it. I took my ruler and went rrrrish rrrish rrrish with my pencil, quickly, randomly, until some kind of meaningful mark-up pattern adorned the pages. And he never read it either, he always walked past, nodding. The same man teaches art.

  To me, history is pointless. It’s all about learning phrases and numbers by heart and then being able to recall them whenever someone shakes you awake in the middle of the night screaming, ‘HOW MANY PEOPLE DIED IN THE GREAT PANDEMIC?’

  My index finger softly brushes the scar on the inside of my left arm, just below the elbow bend where the skin is really sensitive. I guess one could say I’m cheating, because the number there equates what’s left of humanity: 1/2986. It’s a small scar, not much bigger than my pinkie. The two thousand nine hundred eighty-sixth has no flavour. I’m wondering about this lack of sensation since I etched the numbers into my skin a few years back. Blinking the memory away, I try to pull myself together and focus on the test.

  Humanity is now a little short of 3.5 million, so if this is 1/2986th of what was before, an original population size of ten billion is more or less correct. I write down the number, noticing that it took me too long to answer only one of the many questions.

  Once, a few days after we buried my brother, I asked the teacher what had been done with eighty million tonnes of contaminated flesh — assuming that every corpse weighed eighty kilograms on average — and since, a bit more than sixty years later, we see no traces of any of them. Where are they buried? Why are there no graves?

  My teacher had sent me to the dean, who sent me to the doctor, who sent me to my parents.

  Now I know that so many corpses can only be burned, left to rot, or dumped
in the oceans. Do the mighty seas stink of our ancestors? The air doesn’t. At least not up here in the mountains. I wonder if — once we return to the vast lowlands in ten or fifteen years, and the soil is fertile from all the dead — we can eat our harvest without the taste of corpses on our tongues?

  When the bell rings a few minutes later, a shockingly naked page stares up at me.

  ———

  My throat is so dry, I can barely swallow. We are in the same stuffy room, the same teachers circling our desks. Math finals.

  I’m almost overjoyed to see that a large portion of the exam is dedicated to functions. It’s hard to admit, but my parents effectively taught me how to calculate them two years ago, precisely one year before our teacher did.

  Whenever I see the slanted f, I think of the one night my father said, ‘What did you learn at school?’ He’s always saying this. It’s his only way of saying hello. But that night took a different turn and now my left arm is decorated with thirteen parallel lines, pale red and a bit thick at the centre. I made no plan to snap tendons or open blood vessels. Back then, I was convinced there must be more to life than this.

  My pencil drops from my slick hand, pulling me from past to present. The paper in front of me sways and tilts. The room is hot. My abdomen cramps.

  I’ll be lucky to scrape by with a C.

  But I’m not.

  ———

  I arrive at home and quietly place my certificate on the kitchen table. Vomit burns in my mouth. Mother looks at the blood seeping through my pants and hands me a wad of sheep’s wool. ‘Now you are a woman,’ she says.

  I wonder where boys have to bleed from to be considered men.