“Variety's the very spice of life,
That gives it all its flavour.”

-William Cowper

CHAPTER ONE

It was midsummer weather, and waiting for the bus was not half as irksome at it had been a sennight prior. “Virtue my butt,” Lydia spat upsettingly. It was very unladylike of her, I commented. “These numb-skulls are always sticking chickens into our hinds and they don’t follow the rules themselves.”

“I’m sure they have a very good reason for that,” I shrugged mindlessly. I was so stupid, so ignorant, so gullible. Our white linen dresses fluttered quietly in the gentle wind. We heard a faint purr in the distance. The bus was coming for us.

“It’s about time!” Lydia poked her finger into the driver’s pudgy face as we filed in, one two, one two. The bus had tinted windows, not because they didn’t want us to see through them, but because whatever was living in the Wastes was not allowed to see us.

“Come, Lids,” I drew her arm within mine, and led her to our habitual spot by the window. “Isn’t it a lovely day? Don’t you think so?”

“Yes, very,” she rolled her eyes at me, shuddering, and gathering her knees to her breast.

“Ms. Lydia,” said one of the supervisors. This was Jennie’s mother. “Legs down. What impropriety!” She complied, it is sure, frightened into modesty by a junior woman’s sharp warning. At length the girls quieted down, and so Mother Elvira produced a brown book from her purse, and parted it in the middle about. “Listen up, girls!” she implored, blowing a whistle hanging from her neck. “Sappho is waiting,” she shook her finger at the younger girls, the ones which were too young to control their emotions as of yet. She cleared her throat. “Hymn to Aphrodite. –Throned in splendor, immortal Aphrodite! –Child of Zeus, Enchantress, I implore thee Slay me not in this distress and anguish, Lady of beauty.” It went on for a couple more minutes.

“Look,” Lydia poked me in the ribs, expecting me to follow her gaze. I followed it. We were looking at a cabin. Our lips were compressed into grim lines, our brows were bent, and we had stiffened our whole bodies. “Who do you suppose lives in those cabins?”

“Demons,” I breathed single-mindedly.

“Outlaws,” she rallied instantly. It was human nature to suspect the worst. By the time we had done staring at the idle, taunting subject, our bus was entering the neighboring village. At the entrance was a full-size poster of our little, dark Sappho. It was one of the sensual ones. Mother Elvira greatly disapproved of these, they were impure. What it was basically were two naked women in the first plan, one spread over a flat rock, with her thighs opened, sighing and smiling, and the other was resting on the ground, with her left arm wrapped around her companion’s leg and her lips grazing her sex. There were mermaids, in the back plan, making love. “A fool’s fantasy,” was what Mother Elvira had called it.

Underneath it a gold tablet read; “Violet-haired, pure, honey-smiling Sappho.” It was a quote, but we were never told who the authors of these quotes were. I imagined it was someone wise and beautiful.

“Now, I expect you girls to be back at the bus stop by eventide,” Mother Elvira said before letting us out. That was it. That was our signal. We bounced out of the bus like a pack of bewildered gazelles, dispersing like wildfire into the village’s geometric streets.

“Where do you want to go?” Lydia asked casually, pursing her lips as we promenaded idly up the hill. This village had an uneven surface. It was a healthy adjustment to our monotonous landscape.

“I think the ice-cream parlor will do,” I shrugged, letting my arms flutter round me unreservedly. We found it in no time at all, and ordered two vanilla ice-cream cones for a dollar each. The employee winked hungrily at us as we accepted the cold cones from her thick and grubby hands.

“They should call it ‘The Sex City’ of America,” Lydia made jest as we skipped out of doors and found a comfortable bench to sit on in the Park. “These people are mammals. They’re so sexually active, it’s repelling.” A pregnant woman sauntered past us clumsily, her hands constantly rubbing her round belly as if it were her prized possession and worried that someone should steal it from her.

“So it’s true,” Lydia sighed. “She’s glowing, like a star. Imagine how pink her nipples ought to be.”

“Please,” I scoffed. “Her boobs are just bigger is all.”

We were bored. The truth is, we had never gone further than this village in our entire lives. To us, it was as insipid as a line. “When is the bus coming?” she asked, at length. “It should be soon,” I pouted, folding my arms across my chest discontentedly. “It better be soon.”

XXX

The holiday was over before we had time to complain more. The younger girls were chattering excitedly, as if they’d seen a giraffe, some exotic animal, and the older girls complained each to the other. We had nothing else to talk about, but our ailments. On our way home, we passed the same cabin. Or was it another one? They all looked the same.

Twenty more minutes, and we were re-entering our village.

“Oh, no,” Lydia pointed to the build-board. We only had one. “Sappho Day is coming up.”

“We know what that means,” I rolled my eyes.

“Horny women licking each other’s crotches,” she snorted immaturely.

“I’m staying in doors, as a precaution,” I grinned from ear to ear, following her out of the bus light-heartedly.

XXX

When I looked through my window, every time I awoke, and fell asleep, I could see the village’s Hospital. It was a chunky building in red brick, unlike all the others, which were built with white bricks, and had no taste whatever. It had a white cross fastened unto it, and virtually no windows, save the ones close to ground level, where the patient rooms were located. No one really knew what took place in the rooms above. Only the Scientists were aware of that. It was their business; I had no right to be curious about their doings. They allow us to sleep in, because we are gentle, youthful souls in need of such nutrition. But on that morning I rose early with the sun. I groomed myself at my plain toilet table; brushed my hair, filed my nails, added rouge to my cheeks (that is all the makeup women need), and rubbed perfume behind my ears. I’m fine.

I tip-toed out of my room, and began walking towards the front door. Someone was there, and she noticed me right away. “Your residence is in the West-Wing?”

“Yes,” I turned round embarrassedly. “Headmistress Judith.”

“Oh, call me Judith,” she shrugged, coming closer to me. All the girls were frightened of her – it was a woman’s instinct. Something about her just didn’t click. “You an early bird?”

“No,” I shook my head. “Just today.”

“You going for a walk, honey?”

“Yes.”

“May I accompany you to wherever you’re going?”

“I suppose.”

“Give me your arm,” she seized it immediately, dragging me out of doors unceremoniously. “What a swell morning. What do you think?”

“It’s lovely, I’m sure,” I mumbled. What did she want from me? Was she some desperate sort? There were prettier girls, than me, like Agnes, to flirt with. I was the last resort, for anybody. I moralized that she meant business. Perhaps she thought I was ready to be pregnant?

We walked on in silence, our arms linked unnaturally. “Here,” she stopped at a bench, to sit down. “I’m tired. Let’s sit.” Instead I figured I’d lie. I wasn’t at all ready to bear a child in my womb. “No, I won’t. I gotta run, I said I’d meet someone in the Park.”

For a moment, I thought she’d be angry with me, and scold, but after frowning for a minute about, she let me go. “Off with ye,” she shrugged, making herself more comfortable on the hard, wooden bench.

XXX

Naturally, I missed breakfast. I waltzed into the kitchen, asking Helen whether there were any bacon strips and eggs that had not yet been eaten by the girls. She didn’t care. “No,” I mean she didn’t care why I hadn’t shown up for breakfast. “Of course,” I pouted, marching away dejectedly. I was so hungry.

“Hey, you,” Judith’s head suddenly poked out of her parlor.

“Me?” I gaped at her confusedly.

“Yeah, you,” she cackled, like some old witch. “Come along, I have some leftovers from my morning repast. Come, what are you, a chicken? I don’t bite!”

“Okay,” I nodded, walking timidly into her room. No one else was there; it was only the two of us. She sat me at her small round table made expressly for one, and then filled the couch facing me. As I swallowed the egg and then the cold meat and then the coffee, she stared, with her hands crossed modestly over her lap, and her mouth pursed into a line, or was it permanently curled in? One never knows, for certain, with old people. That’s when I really got to look at her. She was really very old. She was in our society classified as the elderly woman. Her fair skin was soggy round the eyes and jaw, her almond-shaped eyes were always wet and tired, her brows were hardly even visible, and her lengthy, silver hair was pulled back into a slapdash ponytail. Her dress-code was black from head to toe.

“Is the food any good?” she asked.

“Oh, sure,” I nodded, suspicious. I took my last gulp. I bounced to my feet.

“How about you don’t go to class this morning?” she proposed, with a smile forming on her lips. She was waiting for the cue to curl the other corner of her lip up.

“Can I?” I asked uncertainly.

“Well of course you can, silly, all you got to do is ask! Go, garden, or something,” she shooed me away, just like that. I was free – well, as close as I could get to that word in our enclosed vicinity – to go wherever I wanted.

I figured I’d take a walk, alongside the wall. I made a round of the village in one hour. At length, I sat underneath an orange tree, and looked up at the watch-tower. There was one guard; as always, only one sufficed. A curious woman is no match for a fire gun. Only the guards were allowed weapons. It was a crime for anyone other than them – even Scientists – to carry one around in their purse. It is made to injure; to slaughter. A priestess once told me, when I was five about, that guns used to be made use of by our ancestors in countless bloody wars. Those ancestors are long dead, however, and their ‘sort’ will never come to perturb our peaceful lifestyle again. They were too violent, and closer to beasts than to Angels, like us.

To her knowledge, the world used to be much worse than it is presently. We are kept in separate villages so that if new beasts appear to violate us, we will be protected. The guards are observant, trustworthy. They ensure our safety. Life has never been better, for life on Earth. There is no more scum infesting its grounds. I should feel perfectly at ease. But am I?